Forbes, Oct 4, 2016 (II)

choi

(1) Christopher Helman, Rethinking Recycling; Not all of your trash has value. (in the section "Verticals").
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chri ... -ceo-david-steiner/

Quote:

(a) "the economics of recycling have turned upside down. Recycling used to be the great example of doing well by doing good. It was green–and it was profitable. In 2014, back when China was still hungry for our lightly used paper, aluminum and steel, you could get $100 or more for the average ton of residential recycling. That was plenty to cover $80 a ton in processing costs and leave a nice margin for Waste Management's shareholders. But that changed. Slower growth in China cut demand. The oil glut has made fresh plastics cheaper than the recycled stuff. * * * Now you'd be lucky if your mixed ton of recycled material gets $80–the same as the cost of processing it.  

"The new paradigm for Waste Management's municipal customers [some cities and towns outsource the processing of recyclables to WM]: 'When prices are high we'll pay you to recycle. When prices are low we have to charge you,' [CEO of Waste Management (WM) David] Steiner says.

(b) "During contract renegotiations early this year, the city ]Houston, Texas] considered doing away with recycling altogether rather than pay for the privilege. Houston finally agreed to a contract that pays Waste Management $3 million a year for recycling but ends glass pickup. (It would have cost more than $100 a ton to crush that glass into a dirty mass, and it has few buyers.) Landfill costs are just $27 a ton, and buried glass bottles don't leach any toxic chemicals. Recycling glass would have cost Houston an extra $1 million a year.  

"Without glass it's easier for Waste Management to focus on the high-value stuff. Last year the EPA did a study looking at the “embedded energy” of various materials and how much energy is saved by recycling them. The clear leader is aluminum. Because the metal requires so much electricity to make yet so little to reprocess into new cans, every ton of aluminum cans contains energy equivalent to 26 barrels of oil. That energy value is evident in the $1,200 price for a ton of scrap aluminum. Other stuff worth recycling includes copper wire, with the energy of 14 barrels of oil per ton, while mixed plastics have 7, personal computers 5, steel cans 4 and newspapers 3. A ton of glass, by comparison, has just a half-barrel's worth of energy, which is about what it takes to drive it to the landfill.

" * * * Of course some eco-zealous cities don't care about such market signals. In a pilot program New York City has paid $1,200 a ton to collect 16,000 tons of kitchen scraps since 2014 [Taiwan since 2005, to pigs; Taiwan's recycle rate, 50%, is among world leaders]. 'If you want to have a high diversion rate and you're ready to raise taxes, we can help,' Steiner says.

(c) "Steiner isn't worried about marginally more solid [ie, better profit margin] waste headed for landfills instead of being recycled. Waste Management invests $400 million a year in its 249 landfills, which are much cleaner than those of a generation ago and are engineered to capture the methane gas generated by rotting garbage. The company makes enough landfill gas to power 470,000 homes. He envisions a day when it could make economic sense to reprocess landfills to 'mine' more metal and plastic out of them. 'There is value in everything we bury,' he says. 'Could come a day when we want to dig it up and cart it off. If we ever get $200 oil and China growing at 7% [Steiner considered 7% low for China], it might be worth it.

Note:
(a) in a recycling plant (which takes in recyclables from household bins): "Material flies from one conveyor belt to another. Magnets pull off steel cans.  skim up cardboard and paper. Optical sensors trigger air puffers that pop [plastic] bottles into the right chutes. * * * about 15% of the stuff citizens put in their recycling bins should have gone in the garbage can. * * * Plastic shopping bags are a common culprit, old garden hoses, too; they wrap around machinery and gum up the works. 'It shuts down the plant' "

Recycling Facility.
www.ecomaine.org/our-facility/recycling-facility/

(b) "A ton of glass, by comparison, has just a half-barrel's worth of energy, which is about what it takes to drive it to the landfill."

Instinctively I do not buy this. Does it make sense that producing glass from sand cheaper than from recycled glass?  See also

Glass manufacturing is an energy-intensive industry mainly fueled by natural gas. Energy Information Administration (EIIA), US Department of Energy, Aug 21, 2013.
www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=12631
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