the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, resident Steve Kim commented on Facebook , “At the VC meeting it was noted that Ridgewood now needs to pay to get recycling hauled away versus before we were paid to recycle.
Is this because recycled items need to be better chosen and sorted by us? Does this mean recycled items are ending up as trash anyways, and should possibly be consolidated with garbage pick up and save the extra effort?”
Mr. Kim has stumbled on the cold hard reality of why we recycle , the NJDEP website spells it out sounding remarkable like any other government make work scheme, but one you can be proud of , “Recycling is a key aspect of our state’s solid waste management strategy and is both an environmental and economic success story. Recycling, the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products, benefits the environment in many ways. Recycling is not only significant because it keeps millions of tons of materials out of landfills and other disposal facilities, but also because it conserves natural resources, saves energy, and reduces emissions of water and air pollutants, including greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling is also an easy and important way for people to express their commitment to the environment. In addition, recycling plays an important role in our state and national economy. Recycling not only creates jobs, but also generates billions of dollars annually in economic activity. For more information on the environmental and economic benefits of recycling, visit the NJDEP’s recycling website at www.nj.gov/dep/dshw/recycling/env_benefits.htm and www.nj.gov/dep/dshw/recycling/economic.h
Then ugly reality is that “recycling” does not save energy or resources it uses three times more resources than disposing of waste in a landfill. The cost to recycle is around $150 per ton, compared to $28 to throw trash in a landfill. Curbside recycling costs 55% more than other methods, and the environmental impact is greater because there are more trucks on the road. Recycling two popular products – newspapers and glass bottles – is more harmful to the environment; newspapers need to be deinked with chemicals and states ship their glass bottles to other jurisdictions. Ultimately, we’re using more energy to recycle than it would take to start from scratch, and all these efforts are in vain since most of the stuff in blue bins still ends up in a landfill anyway.
99% of this stuff is virtue signaling and population control
I would really like to know whether recycling is happening as we all assume it is or mostly wasted effort. It would be easier to throw everything in the garbage as we used to. I will never do that as long as there is a chance that it’s processed appropriately, but things are clearly changing in that world.
After many decades of handling papers, bottles, and cans differently, and feeling a combination of proud and stupid when washing empty containers and carefully saving them in special places and carting them to the curb twice a month, I do wonder.
For recycling to work, someone needs to pay for trash. E.g. wood shavings bought by manufacturer of furniture who press them into wood substitute at cost effective price point. I suspect some things we recycle fall into that category and some do not. If I were in charge of recycling at state level, I’d commission a study to identify what types of material are cost efficient to manufacturers and what materials are not.
Alas, in the real world, environmental agencies pursue policies that benefit their staff, not the environment. Thus creating more waste. Financial – funded by taxpayers. And environmental – where a ton of energy is 1st used to manufacture a product and then a ton more is used to process it into “trash” and dispose in some poor Indian province.
Commingled used to be sorted in China but China changed what they would take, where they reject a load if it contains any “trash”.
Read linked article on plastic and who was behind old (and now new) recycling ads. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled
What we can know from all of this is that we ALL do what the powers that be tell us what to do and when to do it. I have no problem with conservation and not abusing natural resources at the beginning or end of the cycle. Let’s face it there is a LOT OF MONEY to be made for what they tell us is all so important. Those ‘single use’ bags in which we take our groceries home, many people use them for garbage bags. Now we know before the ‘pandemic’ we were headed toward no more plastic bags..so then we were going to have to BUY bags for the garbage. Encourage people to use these bags instead of just discarding them. There are MANY ways to use and re-use. Gosh, who’s grandmother didn’t reuse the plastic containers that cream cheese or ricotta came in to give you a dinner to take home. Grandma knew and we know too, use and re-use whenever possible.
No it’s the market is down, there’s an over abundance of plastics right now. The Chinese don’t even want it. Cardboard, clear glass newspaper that’s where the money used to be. Markets to change. So instead of making 400 grand a year. Now it’s costing us money. And I just read join everybody . Now it’s a law to recycle so it cost money to separate everything because they don’t want all that material at the garbage sites. So again man-made products plastics Styrofoam is the worst for their environment.
You realize we ship all of this to China and they incinerate it.
Want to clean up the environment? – better get behind bombing China and India and nuclear energy.