It’s nice to see people take initiative and organize all of the cardboard they are trying to get rid of. It takes a lot of time and effort to break down boxes like that. The people are probably thinking that not only are they avoiding a fine but they’re also doing a good thing by recycling and eliminating waste that would otherwise would end up at a landfill. The sad thing is that after snapping he picture, I saw a garbage truck come by and take the cardboard boxes along with the garbage next to it. What a waste of time, energy, and good recyclable card board.
Unfortunately that is today’s reality. Not only is it getting more expensive to recycle but we don’t have the facilities to do it. China is limiting how much recyclable material they are accepting from ya and the US doesn’t have the desire to adapt and take it into their own hands. Through a lot of our readings and LWT presentation, it is clear that there is a demand for recycled material. From sustainable homes to side walk panels that can capture rain, there is so much that we can do with the material. The US leaders just refuse to take a step in that direction. So sad!
I think this is such a great post because your picture captures this unknown do-gooder’s actions and your caption describes the unfortunate reality of the world we live in. We have come to a point where recycling is no longer desired because there is a complete surplus of it. I find it sad to think of all the time and effort that this unknown person spent folding these boxes only to be negated when it was collected with the regular landfill garbage. Really good job capturing this moment Anastasiya!
Your photo, and the post you wrote about it, made me recall our class discussion about the surprising number of very critical problems that are affecting the benefits from – and even the possibility of- “recycling” as we know it in the United States today. After several decades of campaigns to raise public awareness of the perilous state of the environment, we’ve certainly come a long way from the time in which recycling was only a habit among overeager second graders who just joined their school’s “Green Club,” and only entered the minds of the general public on the days when the Department of Sanitation sent out their annual newsletter, accompanied by a recycling guide printed on a low-quality fridge magnet. I’m pretty sure the only use I ever got out of mine was to attach field trip permission slips somewhere I wouldn’t forget about them.
Now, nearly all public spaces – including airports, malls, schools, and office buildings – have the now-familiar duo of green and blue recycling bins. Some communities take it a step further, by providing separate containers for the recycling of fabric, technical gadgets, and large household items; other communities have public compost-collection containers. It is not uncommon for inspectors to be hired to ensure that people are properly cooperating with recycling efforts, and individuals and business who refuse to do so can face fairly steep fines. We’re certainly trying. But, here’s the uncomfortable question: are we actually getting anywhere?
As we discussed in class, the United States has a long-established practice of sending the majority of its recycling to China to be sorted and properly processed. Yet, after China restricted imports of many common recyclables (including paper, junk mail, cardboard, and most plastics,) accompanied by a statement that there is no longer a market for these materials in their country, municipalities all over America were faced with a choice: they could agree to pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or simply throw it all away. I’m sure most people wouldn’t need to take even Econ101 to predict the most commonly chosen path. The increased price of maintaining long-established recycling programs is not some mildly frustrating, yet soon-to-be-forgotten price raise. Broadway, Virginia, had a recycling program for 22 years but was forced to abandon it after Waste Management told the town that prices would increase by 63 percent. In Franklin, New Hampshire, public recycling soared when city officials agreed to put paper and plastic recycling bins on street corners, knowing that they would be able to break even on recycling by selling collected materials for $6 million a ton. However, when China’s new policy led the transfer station to begin charging Franklin town $125 a ton to recycle, or $68 a ton to incinerate, the hard choice had to be made; in a town where over 20% of the population lives below the poverty line, asking residents to pay the city government to recycle was not feasible.
In cities where recycling programs were regretfully suspended, masses of trash that city officials still hope to somehow recycle start to pile up. In the vast majority of cases, counties are forced to grit their teeth and take the dreaded trip to bring tons of accumulated recyclable materials to a landfill for incineration. This is often done without notifying county residents in hopes of preventing public outrage. Some nonprofits, such as Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful, have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid caving into current financial pressures to sabotage sustainable practices; in Illinois, 400,000 tons of collected plastic currently sits near a plastic-collection facility, desperately awaiting a turnaround of the market.
For a long time, Americans have had little incentive to consume less. It’s inexpensive to buy products, and it’s even cheaper to throw them away at the end of their short lives. In 2015 (the most recent year for which national data are available, America generated 262.4 million tons of waste, up 4.5 percent from 2010 and 60 percent from 1985.) New York City collected 934 tons of metal, plastic, and glass a day from residents last year, a 33 percent increase from 2013. The ease of recycling has long eased the minds of slightly concerned consumers – after all, if we recycle our disposable items, it’s like we never even used them, right? Throwing a Poland Spring bottle in a blue bin is the equivalent of planting a tree as far as most people’s “good deeds of the day” go.
But the costs of all this garbage are growing, especially now that bottles and papers that were once recycled are now ending up in the trash. We don’t need to be told that this has an environmental cost – organic waste that sits in landfills decomposes and emits methane, which is bad for the climat. We can tell ourselves that burning plastic creates some energy, but it the process is mostly responsible for producing carbon emissions. And, while many incineration facilities bill themselves as “waste to energy” plants, studies have found that they release more harmful chemicals, such as mercury and lead, into the air per unit of energy than do coal plants.
However, if well-honed money-saving mindsets are the main reason China and India’s new import policies are leading many communities to abandon recycling programs, a discussion of the financial consequences of overproduction of consumer waste may have more impact than yet another (albeit well-intentioned) “Save The Penguins” PowerPoint. The United States still has a fair amount of landfill space left, but it’s getting expensive to ship waste hundreds of miles to those landfills. Some dumps are raising costs in reaction to the increased waste resulting from cities forced to surrender their sustainability sending their recyclable materials to incineration. According to one estimate, along the West Coast, landfill fees increased by $8 a ton from 2017 to 2018. Some of these costs are already being passed on to consumers, but most haven’t—yet. However, if we’re going to admit that our urge to save a penny can be stronger than our desired to save the polar bears, we need to consider that our decision to begrudgingly duck “recycling fees” may very well lead to us getting stabbed in the back by even less appealing “landfill transportation” fees instead.