Recently the Recorder published an article on how area towns will be paying more to process their local recyclable trash. The beginning of the problem is that China does not want any U.S. rubbish which leaves our country with nearly nowhere to get rid of it. And, when someplace will buy it, the value is very low (as compared to before). One option in the U.S. is to combine it with normal municipal trash and incinerate or bury it. A few places do this now.
Better options will require some effort by the U.S. government to implement. These tasks are difficult but will help solve the disposal problem and produce some benefits.
One solution is to not generate as much trash to recycle. When I was young, nearly all beverages were sold in reusable bottles. Soda, beer, and even milk was sold in glass containers with a cash deposit value and were returned to a store when empty and sent back to the generating company for washing and reuse. Believe it, glass milk bottles had a deposit of 25 cents in the 1960s. Very few people threw them away. Even newspapers were locally recycled for a cash amount paid by a scrap dealer to be processed for reuse in American paper mills. Now nearly none of this is reused locally. The plastic bottles which now have a deposit are collected at the sorting center and recycled for the material (not reused). Internet purchasing adds a new layer of packaging to the sale of a product. But changing the current system will be tough as we are now a purchase, use and trash society.
A second solution is for our government to help develop local (USA) factories to regenerate raw materials for manufacture. Metal always was and still is easy to recycle. Commercial outfits like Greenfield-based WTE do take it if sorted properly, process it for reuse, and usually pay for the scrap metal. Paper and glass are collected by the towns and are pretty much ready to process as is should there be a plant to do it. Plastic is more difficult because of the many varieties but this gives engineers something to work on.
We have become too dependent on China and others to do what the USA should have always done for itself. The USA did all of this recycling and more in World War II for a historical reference.
Another very significant issue is the finite supply of raw material. Plastic is made from oil and we all know the oil supply is limited. Every bit of scrap which is re-used helps to conserve this natural resource which will eventually run out. This is a national or maybe global issue that will keep growing more important over time.
One trade magazine American Recycler explores all of these issues regularly. It is not new stuff.
I wish I had better suggestions for a solution but I do not.
But awareness is a beginning and we should all become aware.
Alan Owseichik, a retired engineer, is a resident of Greenfield.