The great recycling scam

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

And, yes, it is indeed a scam!

We are encouraged, nay pressured even, to clean and nicely separate all our recyclables – glass, plastic, paper, etc. – into bins for the different ones. But what really happens to those “recyclables” that our municipal refuse services pick up from the kerbside? Often, actually, nothing more that being dumped in the same place where all the other refuse, all the other “waste”, goes; the landfill.

Most municipalities do not have the expensive sorting facilities and in more than half of all cases – if not at times in 90% of them – the collections are all but for show, more or less.

Reuse is much better but most people just cannot think what to do with this or that item of “waste” (waste as a resource) as our mindset, at least that of the great majority, is to buy rather than to make.

This thing about recycling is that it is a crutch to those not wishing to think about the above and as far as our governments are concerned it is a means to blind people into believing that the government and industry care about the Planet. Capitalism never will. The main reasons that many recyclables – aside from the financial costs of sorting centers – are landfilled are at least two-fold.

One is market related and has to do with the over saturation of recyclables meaning that the price ends up so low that separation, even if collected through kerbside collections where we have done much of the sorting already for them, and shipping the stuff out just is not cost effective.

The other is that households and businesses still do not understand that the recyclables have to be clean. Just one wrong item of cardboard, for instance, say one that is greasy or whatever, in an entire container means that all of it gets tossed. Again due to the processing centers not being there and it being expensive to actually do the separation, especially manually.

So municipalities go through the motions of collecting our recyclables – for it looks good to be seen to do it – but then due to low prices on the world market, or whatever, nevertheless, landfill them.

Many of the recyclables – most of them in fact – if they don't get landfilled are not processed “at home” but are shipped to China, or, in the case of appliances, computers and such, to some third world country to be processed, and in the latter case under very polluting conditions and even in China the environmental protection standards are much lower than in Europe or in the USA. So we also export not only our recyclables but also the pollution and poisons that go with the processing of them.

Recycling is also very energy intensive and while, if recycling is done properly, it still saves raw materials and some energy in the processing, the kerbside collections, the shipping to port, the transportation across the oceans, etc., uses lots of energy and creates emissions and pollution.

We must get away from this fig leaf and have products made that, one, last, two, that can be easily repaired and, three, that at the final end of their lives can be reprocessed “at home”.

What can we do?

Use less stuff

The first step to waste reduction and avoiding the recycling scam is to use less stuff, to try, when buying things to buy with less packaging or zero packaging, and to reduce our waste. It also means buying less (new) stuff especially when there is actually no need for it and whatever you have got is still working perfectly well and doing the job that it is meant to do.

Use what you have got

Instead of running off to the stores to get the next generation iPhone or whatever else stick with what you have got (as long as it works, obviously). The latest is not, necessarily, better than the old one that you have already got and the “bells and whistles” that the new version may have are, more often than not, something that you will never, ever use.

Reuse, repair, repurpose

Reuse falls into two categories really. One of them is the continuous use by ourselves, or someone else who we have passed this or that on to, and the other is reusing what are often referred to as items of “waste”, as did our grandparents and their parents or in some cases even our parents still, or making use of what some other person has thrown out.

Repair is, obviously, simple as to what it means. The problem today, though, is that many products are designed in such a way that they cannot be opened and repaired. This is called built-in obsolescence. However, it is possible to “hack” a fair number of products that are believed, even by repair shops, if they still exist, to be non-repairable. In a time not so long ago everything was repairable and if it could not be done by the user then there were shops that could do it for a fee. But today it is getting more and more difficult to find repairers even for those things that can be fixed.

Passing it on

Now that recommendation, I think, is so simple that it needs no explanation. If you, yourself, no longer have use for anything then pass it on to someone who will (be able to) make use of it. If you don't know someone to pass it on to then donate it to a charity shop so that it will find a new home and may even benefit on other ways too.

© 2017

Rag Pickers

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Rag pickers exist still to this very day in many countries around the globe and even in some European (Union) Nations. The name, to some great degree, is a misnomer as they are not just picking rags from the rubbish dumps but many other things that can be recycled. They fulfill a valuable service managing waste resources but, unfortunately, they are not being valued by society and governments and instead of receiving thanks they often receive the opposite.

The Gypsy People – or many of them at least – in Eastern Europe are engaged in this activity, as are many people in Third World countries (sorry, I do not do political correctness and refuse to call those places developing nations). Gypsies were also, more often than not, the so-called “Rag and Bone Men” of Britain, and other countries as well, and their activities kept valuable resources of discarded objects out of the waste stream and landfills, then called rubbish dumps or rubbish tips. A task for which they received little thanks. Also in Western Europe many Gypsies were pickers on the rubbish tips, removing those things that the Rag and Bone Man had not gotten his hands on.

There were also, as already indicated, Gypsies in Britain and other West European countries, who operated as pickers on the municipal rubbish tips, before the time the licensed pickers and now the “keep out – recycling” attitude.

Much of my childhood was spent going through rubbish tips myself salvaging items for repair and resale, scrap for sale, or things that could be reworked into something else to sell. I guess that is why I am still today loathed to throw out anything that could just possibly and remotely be upcycled into something “new” or which could come in handy for use in some way or other.

Today, as said, the activity of the picker on rubbish dumps, now called landfills, and especially at waste transfer stations, once upon a time called rubbish tips, is strictly controlled and licensed pickers have to pay fees to the councils for being allowed to rescue resources. Without a license it is considered theft and the same goes, according to law, for removing anything from a dumpster, even if it is not on someone's property. The world has gone mad, I am sure of it.

© 2015

Where do your recyclables (really) go?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Have you ever asked yourself as to where your recyclables that you put out for collection or that you take to the recycling bank actually end up. The answers would surprise you in may, if not indeed all, cases.

GLASS

“Oh, they make it back into bottles and such” is what most people believe and say and maybe even you. But that is, in most cases, plain wrong.

A major percentage of all glass collected is crushed and made – wait for it – building sand. Yes, sand, the very thing that glass is made of in the first place; silicate. Only a tiny percentage of bottles and jars from recycling banks and kerbside recycling goes back to become new bottles and jars or any other glass products for that matter.

PLASTIC/PLASTIC CONTAINERS/-BOTTLES

The recycling of plastic is also very much an issue. The problem is that much of your recyclables in the form of plastic bottles and other plastic containers are while they are collected “at home”, and this is also the case with many other recyclables, they are not recycled “at home” but are shipped to places such as China and India, etc. where the recycling “industry” is not subject to the same stringent regulations as would be the case “at home”.

Many of the recyclables that you, and others, so diligently put out for kerbside recycling never actually make it to any recycling plants, whether “at home” or “abroad”. If there is no market for them – that is to say if there is an 'oversupply' – they simply get landfilled the way it used to be and the same goes for anything that may be “contaminated”.

This is why waste reduction and especially reduction of packaging, and reuse and upcycling in DIY fashion is so very important.

The majority of people, conditioned nowadays by the powers-that-be to recycle, obediently toss their cans, plastic, glass, paper, etc. into the appropriate receptacles believing they do a good thing and the Planet a good turn. Reusing like our grandparents did rarely ever enters their minds.

Are we being lied to by our governments as to what happens to most of the recyclables collected? One could say “yes” to this question to a very large degree.

It makes for an educated consumer to change the behavior of industry to reduce packaging and not just in weight as some have done with glass bottles the glass of which has become a great deal thinner. This is only done to benefit the corporations and their bottom line as it reduces weight and they can put more onto a truck. And this is the same reason why some companies have replaced tin cans for, say, chopped tomatoes with Tetrapak like cardboard packs lines with foil. The latter, unlike the tin cans used before, cannot be reused and also not be recycled in most places.

As long as the consumer, however, is left in the belief that the packaging is recyclable and recycled such change is not about to happen soon.

We must understand how things actually work and function in recycling and waste management field to understand as to how the proverbial cookie crumbles.

Paper recycling and that of cardboard is another issue also that is far from as cut and dry as it is more often than not being presented.

A great amount of paper and card collected goes straight to landfill and that more often than not not only because of market saturation but also and especially because of what is referred to as contamination.

Contamination, as far as paper and card is concerned are the wrong kind of printed matter, such as glossies, for instance, or ink jet printed pages. This ink of the latter which is, more often than not, not waterproof but actually water soluble, and certain colors of this can make the entire batch unusable and in cardboard items such as Pizza boxes and other card with grease or “paper” cups which are lined with either a plastic or a wax liner. Here often people are fault rather than the municipalities, etc., and that through ignorance.

But, again, when the market is saturated with recyclable paper waste the rest gets landfilled and often even at other times.

All of this makes a mockery of kerbside recycling (and other methods) that we are presented with. The only way to go is that of waste reduction and as most of this waste is packaging it is reduction of this, of packaging. Furthermore we have to think REUSE rather than recycling and reuse and upcycle as much as we possibly can. Our ancestors did and we must do so (again) as well.

© 2013

UK Looks for Storage for Piles of Worthless Recycling Waste

Recycling waste piles up as prices collapse

by Michael Smith

Thousands of tonnes of rubbish collected from household recycling bins may have to be stored in warehouses and former military bases to save them from being dumped after a collapse in prices.

Once again the bottom has dropped out of the market for recyclables and we have problems. Whoever said that it was supposed to be profitable selling the stuff – just joking. However, shipping the stuff 10,000 miles across the world definitely does not make sense to me and I am sure to very few readers either.

We have been here before a number of years back when the price for recyclables collapsed and the likes of the Scouts stopped collecting waste newspapers and such because they could not sell the stuff, and glass from recycling containers was actually put into landfill.

The well-meaning Joe Public and his wife studiously put those glass bottles, separated by colors, into the separate containers only for the council collectors to come along and empty all containers into one truck to go to the dump to have the broken glass landfilled.

The problem is that we look to make money out of the recyclables rather than to make something for sale out of the recyclables. Instead of recycling the councils actually just collect what in the German Democratic Republic was referred to as “secondary raw materials”, whether that was waste paper, tin cans, glass jars, bottles.

Then again, in the then German Democratic Republic, the country which the West called “East Germany”, glass jars and bottles, more often that not collected by the Young Pioneers, were simply returned to the factories and reused. Something that should be done again also in Britain and other countries of the developed world, instead of sending the collected glass, broken by then, off to be melted down again and turned into something else. What a waste. Only glass that has finally broken, after thousand of times refilling should, in the end, go to be recycled, say, into new bottles and jars or even into bricks, paving slabs or even kitchen counter tops. But that should only happen after the bottle or jar has finally come to the end of its life; not before, after one single use often, as is the case today.

Can we not develop a proper recycling industry in our own countries, be this the United Kingdom or the USA?

Also, how come that the bottom has dropped out of the market, supposedly, for so we are being told, when the prices for metals are at an all time high, including here aluminium – or aluminum as our American cousins say; the very metal soda and beer cans are made from.

The local municipalities are trying to claim that with the economic crunch, the price for recycled good has dropped, and that now they and collection companies have tons of worthless recyclables that they cannot do anything with.

Collection companies and councils are running out of space to store paper, plastic bottles and steel cans because prices are so low that the materials cannot be shifted. Collections of mixed plastics, mixed paper and steel reached record levels in the summer but the “bottom fell out of the market” and they are now worthless. The plunge in prices was caused by a sudden fall in demand for recycled materials, especially from China, as manufacturers reduced their output in line with the global economic downturn.

In an effort to store them, they are requesting for less strict storage regulations to try and keep the recyclables from being dumped while they ride out the economic crisis, and what a surprise – NOT!

Much of the recyclables in the UK are sold to China for the manufacturing of goods. However, as the economy sinks, so too does production, even in the cheap labor countries such as China, and therefore so too does the demand for recyclables. Plastics and metals that were once valuable have sunk to practically worthless. But it does not mean they should get dumped. We cannot, despite what so many Brits think, continue using landfill – there are no more holes in the ground into which to dump thinks. And this aside from the fact that landfill can and does also cause contamination of soil and water.

Authorities are hoping to store the materials in warehouses and former military bases until the slump passes, but that means lighter regulations on how much waste can be stored for how long.

Officials from the Environment Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are considering changing the regulations on the storage of recycled waste and are expected to issue new guidelines next week. They have been urged to relax the rules limiting the quantity of waste that can be stored and to allow it to be kept in secure warehouses or abandoned military bases and former airfields.

They expect the situation to worsen before it gets better, since the holidays produce so much paper and plastic waste with parties and gifts. But they do see a light at the end of the tunnel, since new recycling plants will be opening soon and the dependence on China for purchasing recyclables will be lessened, so we are told.

It is about time that we did the recycling itself and in fact, in my opinion, recycling plants should be operated locally by the individual municipalities so that the recyclables do not need to get shipped over long distance, unless we can use the canals and inland waterways that the government recently discovered can be used for transporting of freight. The fact that they were designed and build for just that task some 200 years or so ago totally escaped them.

It is really wonderful to hear that people are doing so well at recycling that it is rapidly piling up, but hopefully the piles will begin to be processed soon. Perhaps pileup will help to get more products made from recycled materials, proving we don’t need new raw materials to make new products.

Maybe also one day we will get it past certain groups and organizations of the what can but be called eco-fascists and actually will have, just like some other European countries, waste incinerating power plants where energy and heat is produced for the local community. There is always some waste that simply cannot be recycled and it has to go somewhere and it is better for it to go up in smoke – we can clean that smoke also without problems; the technology does exist – than to go into holes in the ground which we are getting rather short of.

First of all we must, however, have our own, ideally local, recycling plants where the material is sorted and then, ideally also, made into new products.

The real truth, to sum it up again, is that recycling should not be price based. It is an essential process to reduce the rate and then eventually stop resource depletion. Government legislation is required to ensure that all materials available for recycling are recycled. Recycling is not an economic exercise, it is a survival system.

© M Smith (Veshengro), November 2008
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What IS stopping us recycling?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

A lack of storage space or access to recycling sites, confusion over collection days and skepticism about the environmental benefits are just some of the obstacles stopping people recycling more.

And I would say that the access to recycling sites and the lack of them in fact is the greatest problem here, In addition to that recycling would increase most remarkably, as has been proven elsewhere, when financial incentives are given for recycling, e.g. by being paid for collected drinks cans brought to the recycling centers.

The government-funded Waste & Resources Action Plan (WRAP) has carried out research investigating the barriers preventing a further rise in household recycling rates – and offering local authorities advice on overcoming them.

According to WRAP, these barriers can be broken down into four distinct areas, and those are: physical, behavioural, lack of knowledge and attitudes and perceptions.

On the physical front, people struggle when containers for collecting recycling are unsuitable or there is no space for storage, when collections are unreliable and when they have no way of getting to recycling sites. The latter, in my experience, is one of the greatest inhibitors for people's recycling abilities.

In addition to that, in the area where I have experience with personally, it takes ages of waiting in line with vehicles to get stuff dropped off at the recycling centers, which are few and far between, and often not easy to get to either. The getting to is even worse when one does not have a motor vehicle at one's disposal and one lives where the curbside recycling units refuse to go.

Behavioural obstacles, so the study found, include people being too busy, having difficulty with establishing a routine for sorting out recycling or simply if they forgetting to put it out at the right time.

In many cases people also lack the knowledge of how their scheme, if there is any, works or what materials can be recycled.

There is often also great confusion, it must be said, at the local authority recycling management level as to what plastics, for instance, are recyclable. I have been told at more than one instance that certain plastic packaging was not recyclable when the manufacturer assures that the packaging is PET.

Attitudes and perceptions throws up a mixed bag of barriers. There are some people that simply doubt the environmental benefits of recycling, and then there are others who feel that they are not adequately rewarded for doing the right thing and then again others are feel that sorting through waste is dirty.

Those that feel that they are not adequately rewarded for recycling are, I think, on to a very valid point, and as I mentioned already, in countries where payment is given for material brought in the recycling rates are much higher and there are even people who literally live off gathering up the waste that other people drop, for sale.

Phillip Ward, Director of Local Government Services at WRAP, said: "Only by addressing these barriers will we get people to recycle more things more often.

"Good communication about their recycling service is vital but it will not persuade people to use services which are unreliable or too complicated.

"We believe this research will help local authorities boost their own recycling rates and to build on their existing successes. WRAP will continue to support local authorities in achieving this."

To the comments of the WRAP representative could be added that, and yes, I do keep on about it, a proper nationwide scheme of rewarding people for bringing in recyclables would make even more of a difference.

But, while this works in so many other countries, I am sure that we will be told that it just cannot work in Britain, as with so many other good ideas, on the environmental front. Britain, so we are told again and again, is different and while things may work in Germany, the Netherlands or the USA, they could never work here.

Time to think and rethink, methinks...

© M Smith (Veshengro), August 2008
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Roadside trash becomes loot for thieves

States, cities crack down on thefts of recyclables

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Residents in US towns have described that when they put out the garbage and recycling on the curb for pickup that strangers dig through their bins stealing trash they aim to turn into treasure.

Glass breaks, paper flies - the loot's gone hours before the waste company even arrives.

Those people are like an army out there, people report. They are in coming in trucks, work with cell phones. To them it is a business.

Obviously, recycling and the collection of recyclables is a business and while we cannot encourage the behavior described by some residents of those recyclers, those “thieves”, is it not the case that once anything is by the roadside it is public property?

I do a lot of “roadside shopping” as and when I can, but then my finds are used at home or are turned into resalable goods.

However, it would appear that taking and removing cans, bottles and other recyclables from bins is illegal in many places, including San Francisco and New York City.

America never ceases to amaze me in regards of such laws. Much like the fact that it is a felony in many areas to collect rainwater for use in one's garden and such.

With prices for aluminum, cardboard and newsprint going up and an economic slowdown putting added pressure on people's pocketbooks, curbside refuse has become a hot commodity.

A truck piled high with mixed recyclables can fetch upward of $1,000; newspapers alone can grab about $600.

The issue has caught the attention of state and local officials, who are seeking more stringent regulations to curb theft, saying lost revenue threatens the financial viability of their recycling programs.

Maybe if they actually would have a different system which would get people to bring the recyclables to a collection point where they actually would pay those people that recycle the trouble at the curbside would not happen.

But, as in so many places elsewhere, such big places seem to want money from things that they did not work for; the city authorities I am referring to here, not anyone else.

One cannot, obviously condone the theft of “fresh” newspapers, as apparently is happening with the free weekly “The East Bay Express”, which covers Oakland, Berkeley and other Bay Area cities, which are stolen directly from the rack by recyclers by the ton. This is, obvious theft and theft is wrong.

While still legal in some places – though to a great degree illegal, sort of, in the UK – I am sure that dumpster dicing will be made a felony as well, seeing that often they are full of metal, wood and all other useful items, and recyclables.

In Britain we are, like, so I understand, also in the USA and other places, we are seeing metals being stolen left, right and center, such as lead from church roofs, copper and lead pipes from public lavatories, and wires and cables from railroad projects and even live cables. The length that those metal thieves go are unbelievable but the prices are high and many of those that buy scrap metals are rouges themselves. If they were honest and the word would get around that no one is buying the material that appears to come from illegal sources then the thefts would go away, of that I am sure.

Food for thought...

© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008