Why Recycling Cannot be Free

The biggest problem with recycling, in the western world, is that recycling is largely no longer profitable. Often times, this lack of profitability means that recycling programs are being dialed back and or shuttered, with the resources ending up in landfills.  In fact, according to the New York Times, there are hundreds of towns and cities across the U.S. that have canceled recycling programs, limited the types of materials they accept or agreed to huge price increases, in the last two years alone.

Let’s discover why.

The Many Costs of Recycling

According to Better Meets Reality, the following costs affect current recycling profitability:

1.      Collection costs

2.      Transport costs

3.      Sorting costs

4.      Cleaning costs

5.      Costs to maintain recycling facilities

6.      Costs to support necessary industry jobs

7.      Costs involved in making the new product

Zebulon Parsons, President of Bricolage Dynamics, states that these costs fall within something that is referred to as an industry supply chain. Generally speaking, Zebulon illustrated that the most common supply chain for recyclables, in the US, looks as follows:

According to Parsons, each step of the supply chain steps come with their inherent color-coded costs such as labor, transport, maintenance and facility costs, all of which drive up the price of the finished recycled material.

Ultimately, if recycled materials cost more to procure, then companies that use these materials, in their manufacturing processes, will simply buy the new, virgin equivalent. Think recycled plastic pellets vs. virgin plastic pellets.

This begs the question, if the collection is free, how are all these processing costs being paid for? Some would argue, the costs are covered through the final sale of the materials as well as tax dollars.  

Do Material Sales and Tax Dollars Cover the Process Costs?

Nowadays, the most common answer is, No.

Material sales are lagging in the United States. One of the biggest contributing factors to this is that the US lost one of its largest recycling buyers, China, in 2018. Concurrently, many domestic municipalities and businesses involved in the industry have been using outdated processes and old tech, that were never upgraded, due to the sale of these dirty, unsorted recyclables to China, according to The Washington Post. Essentially, China stopped buying and the US was left with an archaic, domestic industry that cannot find enough buyers for dirty, comingled recyclables.

In regards to tax dollars, many municipalities have been campaigning for tax increases for years in order to fund better recycling programs, with relatively little success. The truth of the matter is, the average tax dollars spent on recycling have long been outweighed by the processing costs.  

With little to no revenue stemming from material collections, compounded by not being able to sell the final product, recyclables are left to go to the landfill. As a result many programs across the western world have dialed back with some shutting down.   

How to Improve the Current State of Recycling

Bricolage Dynamics, a recycling innovation company based in Greenville, SC, proposes the following changes be made to benefit and secure the future of the recycling industry:

1.      Increase supply chain visibility for participating households

2.      Increase privatization in the recycling industry

3.      Create local buyers for local recycling materials

4.      Separate recycling at the home level instead of at a processing facility

5.      Reduce the supply chain steps from the household to the end buyer

6.      Charge households exactly what it costs to perform the service well

7.      Allow households to elect whether or not they use the service

8.      Provide a variety of cost effective, residential recycling collection options

Can Recycling be Free?

No, recycling cannot be free and programs that offer free collection and drop off do more damage than good. On a national scale, free collections perpetuate an archaic expectation that facilitating the greater good comes at relatively no cost to the individual. This notion can be the death of recycling services that charge households to participate, in spite of the fact these very services may be promoting higher recycling rates and more robust business models.

Ultimately, if you want to have something done well and if you want something that is here to stay, you either have to do it yourself or pay for it to be done the right way.

How Cross Contamination is Lowering National Recycling Rates

According to the EPA, the recycling and composting rate, in the United States, has hovered, for many years, around the 32% mark of the total materials discarded (MSW). These low recycling recovery rates have led to an astonishing 146.2 million tons of materials being landfilled in 2018 alone. Of this large tonnage, 7.5 million tons of glass, 13.9 million tons of metal, 27 million tons of plastic and 17.2 million tons of paper/cardboard were landfilled respectively. These numbers are especially discouraging when the EPA estimates that nearly 75% of national waste is recyclable. 75% compared to the current 32%? What are we doing wrong?

One simple piece of the explanation relies on the cross contamination of recyclables.

What is cross contamination?

According to Rubicon, a global waste and recycling solution’s company, “recycling contamination occurs when materials are sorted into the wrong recycling bin or when materials are not properly cleaned, such as when food residue remains on a plastic yogurt container”.

The effects and the causes of cross contamination.

Rubicon calculated that In California alone, nearly 1,000 recycling plants have shut down within the last two years, directly suffering from a staggering national average of 1 in 4 items being cross contaminated.

Many citizens, here in the US, are not familiar with cross contamination, the term wish-cycling or even the implications of how what they place in their own recycling bins, is affecting the next 100 households on a given recycling pickup route, says Zeb Parsons of Bricolage Dynamics, a glass recycling startup based in Greenville, SC. In Greenville, SC for example, Bricolage often hears from citizens that the local city and county do in fact recycle glass. These two entities, in fact, do not recycle glass. What Bricolage has found is that people who have moved from an area that still recycle items such as glass, do not think to check their new city and county’s publications on what can and cannot be recycled. Additionally, simple items such as Keurig capsules, Styrofoam, certain types of plastic, certain types of containers as well as beverage caps can all lead to recycling confusion and ultimately cross contamination. Further complicating the matter, the rules and regulations regarding acceptable materials can vary from town to town, let alone state to state, making things particularly confusing for the average citizen.

How much cross contamination does it take to send a truck load of recycling to the landfill?

The answer is not nearly as much as one would think.  Sometimes the decision to landfill is done simply by spot checking the truck and other times it is done after the materials have been dumped out of the truck. The answer largely depends on a recycling plant’s individual ability to absorb the additional sorting, processing and disposal costs of the non-recyclables.

What can be done to mitigate cross contamination?

First and foremost, it’s healthy to view cross contaminates as trash, because if an item can’t be recycled, it is trash. Furthermore, checking with your local municipality on what items can and cannot be recycled is regarded as a great first step. The City of Greenville, SC has their up to date, accepted recyclables listed on every bin. Additionally, their list can be found here. Most municipalities will more than likely have this information readily available to their residents.

The second thing to take head of is just because a container has the recycling symbol listed, does not mean this material can be recycled in your town. Again referring to your town’s published recyclable materials will solve this issue.

Lastly, rinsing your recyclables in order to clear food waste goes a long way toward increasing your material’s chances of being recycled.

According to Zeb Parsons, “by the time your recyclables are being carted off, your recycling bin should look fairly clean and standardized.”

Ultimately, all three of these steps will put your household on the forefront of reducing recycling cross contamination, in turn, boosting your local recycling rates.