The Common Questions of the Curmudgeon
Isn't recycling is a waste of time?
No! We're happy to report that recycling is very effective at reducing environmental impacts and at providing raw material for American manufacturers.

Isn't there plenty of space in the United States for all our waste? Well, sort of. But garbage disposal becomes more expensive as you put landfills further away from where it is collected. That makes disposal less attractive. Few communities would like to have a landfill nearby, making it difficult to build new landfills at a sufficient pace.

Isn't it just cheaper to throw everything away? Not really. New York City's recycling program was on the chopping block several years ago because it was believed that the city could save money by just throwing everything away. However, after glass and plastic were removed from the program, the cost savings failed to materialize. New York then put out the contract for recyclable materials out for bid, and found a vendor who wanted to pay for the materials instead of charge for them. The result is a much more efficient and cost-effective system.

Critics of recycling often do not look at the benefits from the perspective of our manufacturers. Currently 37% of all paper fiber used in the United States is from recycled paper. If we threw everything away, paper mills would have to replace that pulp made from trees. The story is the same for plastic, aluminum, steel, and glass. Using recycled materials is less energy intensive, which is more efficient for the economy at large.

Does anyone really want all that stuff?
You betcha! (That means yes.) Right now, American aluminum, paper, plastic, steel, and glass manufacturers can't get enough recycled material. Part of the reason is because the Chinese economy is buying up anywhere from a quarter to a third of our recyclable materials to feed their rapid economic growth. This situation is creating competition for your stuff--so keep it coming!

Does the recycling truck go straight to the landfill?
No. In fact, it's illegal for anyone to collect your recyclables and then dispose of it. Check out the law here. (If you spot a hauler throwing away your recyclables, please report it to your city or county recycling office.) Your recycling truck has to go to a recycling center so the material can be sorted. The recycling center then bales the separated materials and ships them to end markets, like paper mills, aluminum smelters, steel mills, and so on.

There is really no good reason for a hauler to landfill your recyclables. Waste haulers have spent a considerable amount of capital to send out separate trucks to pick up the material. Even if market prices for recyclable commodities are low, it still would be cheaper for a recycler to sell the material at a loss than to pay to throw that material away.

Some recycling trucks, particularly those that pick up recyclables that are placed in one cart (see single-stream recycling below), look just like garbage trucks. Don't worry, the material will go to the recycling center.

Does all the stuff sent to a recycling center get recycled?
Not all of it. We want to state clearly that MOST of the material that goes into a recycling center ends up at an end market for re-manufacturing.

After people and machines sort out your recyclables, there is stuff left over on the conveyor belt. We call this the "residual." The residual can include contaminated paper (like food-stained pizza boxes), plastic containers that cities do not collect (like yogurt cups and butter tubs in the Twin Cities), and broken glass in pieces too small to be worth sorting by color (or "mixed glass cullet").

Recyclers pay attention to the residual rate because it tells us about the efficiency of a recycling center. Again, it does not make economic sense to pay to throw away a lot of material that could be sold to an end market.

Residual rates can vary from about one percent to 15 percent in Minnesota. The lowest rates tend to be found in recycling programs that set out materials in separate bags or bins and are kept separate on the truck. This is called source-separated recycling. End markets tend to like source-separated material because it tends to be more homogenous and clean. One complaint of this system is that it can be complicated to remember how to sort materials at the curb, so some people just don't bother to participate. It is also more strenuous for recycling truck drivers.

Higher residual rates generally are found in programs where one puts cans and bottles altogether in one bin and paper together in another bin or bag. This is called co-mingling or two-stream recycling. Another form of recycling that has traditionally had higher residual rates is called single-stream, or when you put all your recyclables in one cart just like you would for garbage. Some paper end markets around the country have expressed concern about broken glass getting mixed in with paper, particularly newsprint. Whether or not this is true depends on the specific facility. The advantage to co-mingling and single-stream methods is that they reduce transportation costs dramatically because it takes less time to load, thereby making the economics of recycling more favorable overall. Residential participation is also believed to increase in these programs due to simplicity and convenience. (There are many factors, however, that lead to increased participation.) Single-stream is also safer for drivers, since they do not have to lift bins several hundred times a day.

Glass tends to be the biggest part of the residual rate in single-stream and co-mingled recycling programs. This is because machinery in highly-automated recycling centers leads to more glass breakage. To date, the broken glass cullet has been used for other beneficial purposes, like landfill cover, sandblasting grit, and road aggregate, instead of for container glass. Some recycling advocates argue that the energy savings from recycling container glass into new container glass are so great that we should recover as much glass for recycling as possible.

There is technology to help reduce the glass residual, and we are seeing its introduction in the Upper Midwest. This technology runs bits of mixed glass cullet on a conveyor and uses an optical scanner to sort the broken glass by color. The sorted material is then appropriate for glass container manufacturing.

This issue makes for hot politics in the recycling field, but let us assure the general public that recycling continues to work in Minnesota!