Upswing - but let's not be short sighted.



Things are finally looking up in the recycling industry. It has been a long and difficult journey that unfortunately many didn't survive. Positive changes are underway; end-users are now seeking material that collection centers and materials recovery facilities were recently begging & paying to move. Another positive step is that more and more companies are making commitments to increase the recycled content in their products and aiming towards the goal of a truly circular economy. This is amazing news that benefits not only the recycling industry but our environment as a whole. 

With all the positive trends there does remain one consistent issue. End-users will require quality material in order to make quality products. The number one issue that directly contributed to the crumbling of the recycling industry remains the number one issue with recycling; contamination. Outreach, education, and investments by so many have helped to make the information more available and easier to access but the recycler still needs to make the effort to ensure what they are placing in their recycling bins can actually be recycled. 

So many community collection centers opted to close because they just could not properly police their residents or afford to pay the disposal costs for the large amount of contamination they receive. We found that even with clear signage and bin labeling the contamination remains unreal. Below is a picture from our residential collection area. Signage clearly lists what items are accepted, that no plastic bags should remain, and nothing should be placed outside the containers?!? Do people not read, not understand, or not care? Your guess is as good as ours. 


So what is the solution? How do we ensure that people clean up their act and recycle with care? We wish we had an answer. 

We have definitely found success in educating children and they many times successfully guilt parents into compliance. The mini recycling police of the house push parents and siblings to abide. It's all a matter of finding the right motivation but we just aren't sure what that is. 

We are sure that recycling will continue to struggle if people do not do their part to recycle with care. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Recycling Education

Image
I was out in the materials recovery facility trying to get some action shots as the single-stream material was being processed. It is always good to have visuals as you speak about how the material is handled to help everyone understand how we process your recyclables.  As I walked to the loading spot I passed overflowing barrels  - they caught my attention because they weren't going to look great in the video I was trying to capture.  I paused in the feed area waiting for a large 100-yarder to empty the community's single stream so I could follow it as it was loaded and began the sorting process. As I waited the line stopped once, twice, and then again. I turned to see why it kept stopping and the team was expediently working together to scoop a shrub off of the line including branches, leaves, and dirt.  It was at that moment I decided it was more important to cover the "ugly" things I didn't initially want to capture than the process itself.  The overflowing ba
Read more

Confusion

Image
The recycling markets have been in the spotlight lately for being in a tough spot and that's good because they are. Fuel & oil prices as well as the state of foreign markets play a large role in the current state of recycling and material recovery facilities but the single largest obstacle that MRF's battle every day is contamination. The best part about this is that unlike fuel prices and foreign markets the people recycling have a direct hand in this and can change it. I think for the most part, we are all pretty bright people who have come to understand that recycling is important for the future of our planet yet the results are still so ugly, why?? Recycling is confusing! It's not so much that the process itself is all that complex but there are just so many variables. 1. The numbers on the bottom of the bottles aren't always a true indicator of what the bottle is made of (at least completely). There is no real "ruling body" that sets regula
Read more

Great Question - Response to Reader Question

Hi! And thanks for being the recycler for our residential trash service. I was looking at your blog and found it useful. I wonder if you could address a topic in the blog, and/or send me a personal reply. It is said that about 10% of what we put in our home recycle bin gets recycled. The rest goes overseas, into landfills, etc. Can you comment on this? I realize some of the reason for this is that people contaminate their recycling, rendering the whole load unusable, but what other reasons are there that cause such a small percentage of our recycling to not get recycled? Thanks in advance. Thanks for reading, asking, and for your concern in general. When the 10% number is thrown around it sure is concerning. This number, from what I've read when we researched a bit more in-depth, is based upon 10% of ALL materials produced in the US being recycled. That is still terrible, but not reflective of only 10% of the material placed in your recycling bin. Unfortun
Read more