Hello, everyone, Philipp here. We’re hearing a lot about income inequality these days, and I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the economics of landfills, and the companies that operate them. The results might surprise you – or make you angry. In 1984, about 17% of…
While we favor a circular economy without landfilling or WTE/Incineration the nature of society (and consuming) does create waste that cannot be avoided or recycled. In that case waste should first be made inert, toxics destroyed, and materials and energy recovered so that landfilling, the worst option for dealing with…
Americans support recycling. We do too. But although some materials can be effectively recycled and safely made from recycled content, plastics cannot. Plastic recycling does not work and will never work. The United States in 2021 had a dismal recycling rate of about 5 percent for post-consumer plastic waste, down from a high of 9.5 percent in 2014, when the U.S. exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled—even though much of it wasn’t.
Recycling in general can be an effective way to reclaim natural material resources. The U.S.’s high recycling rate of paper, 68 percent, proves this point. The problem with recycling plastic lies not with the concept or process but with the material itself.
WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) – The rate of plastic waste recycling in the United States fell to between 5%-6% in 2021 as some countries stopped accepting U.S. waste exports and as plastic waste generation surged to new highs, according to a report released on Wednesday.
On Wednesday evening, April 27th 2022, the King County Solid Waste Division (SWD) held a virtual meeting to provide an update on the expansion and operation of the Cedar Hills landfill, an exercise that can best be described as attempting to put lipstick on a pig. The landfill, originally slated…
