So far, not many companies are landfilling recyclables, but they interviewed some recyclers. Some are struggling, some have subsidies. I don't know about Recology specifically.
The thing is, just because they *collect* recyclables in Oregon does not mean they *recycle* them.
As of May 29 in the NYT:
In the Pacific Northwest, Republic has diverted more than 2,000 tons of paper to landfills since the Chinese ban came into effect, Mr. Keller said. The company has been unable to move that material to a market “at any price or cost,” he said. Though Republic is dumping only a small portion of its total inventory so far — the company handles over five million tons of recyclables nationwide each year — it sent little to no paper to landfills last year.
But for smaller companies, like Rogue Disposal and Recycling, which serves much of Oregon, the Chinese ban has upended operations. Rogue sent all its recycling to landfills for the first few months of the year, said Garry Penning, a spokesman.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-landfills-plastic-papers.htmlAnother big problem is "aspirational recycling." People want to feel good about their consumption, so they put all manner of things in recycling (notably, food-contaminated carboard). We have spent a lot of time educating people to recycle, but what we should have been teaching is:
If you are 99% sure it goes in recycling, then put it in the trash.
I've had this discussion with people all the time. They say "Oh our community is great. They recycle all plastics, even #7." The thing is, #7 means "other" which means there is no defined resin, which means there has *never* been a recycling market for all the #7 we use. Municipalities did this because the "catchment" was so poor on #1 and #2, which are the only ones anyone actually wants.
But now that China has raised the bar on contamination and has outright banned post-consumer plastic and paper, it means that single-stream recycling general won't work and thus...
After China banned used plastics this year, many municipalities in the United States no longer accept plastics numbered 3 to 7, which can include things like yogurt cups, butter tubs and vegetable oil bottles.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-wrong-mistakes.htmlThe really surprising and interesting thing that I got from the Outside/In episode is that many people are now saying that the only two viable options are:
1. separating everything into separate bins for glass, plastic, office paper, cardboard and only accepting #1 and #2 plastic like we used to
2.
not separating anything (that was the surprise). Trash and recycling in the same stream, and then build high-tech plants that do the separating at the end.
#2 has a few advantages
- plants designed from the outset to handle trash, so handling "contamination" is built into the system and doesn't break the works
- doesn't confuse people with the rules, so there is potential for much higher catchment
- only one set of trucks, so big savings on labor, fuel, carbon footprint, etc.
I haven't looked into this and they didn't say a lot about it, but it seems that the big disadvantage is simply the capital cost. They implied the tech was actually pretty good already.
Being somewhat pessimistic about human nature, based in part on what I see in the park garbage cans in our rental recycling, I think #2 is the future of recycling.
Ever since I was a little kid, before we even recycled much, I always wondered when we drove by the city dump whether someday there would be robots that would "mine" landfills for all the recyclable buried there. It seems like we're almost there. I guess it will be a matter of ROI in the end. If the process is low cost enough, there has to be a lot of precious and semi-precious metals in the landfills of America.