“Let’s not forget that local government have had a real hatchet job done on them by central government in terms of budgets and finance, and I feel really sorry for them,” he said. “All these demands and criticisms that recycling performance hasn’t been good, and yet they haven’t been given any money to get it right.”
The aim is to save resources – but losing money is proof of using more resources. So, if recycling swallows money then we shouldn’t be doing it – in order to save resources.
Except we aren’t doing it to save resources – if we were, there’d be a penny back on every glass bottle like there used to be, and that would be extended to plastic bottles too…
No Julia. They’re just doing it because they can.
“The aim is to save resources – but losing money is proof of using more resources. So, if recycling swallows money then we shouldn’t be doing it – in order to save resources.”
Thats not necessarily so. Its a question of what you call ‘resources’. You would probably include labour in that term, the recyclers wouldn’t. Thus if some recycling process is very labour intensive its entirely possible for it to be saving ‘resources’ (ie physical metal, plastics, paper, etc etc) but still costing a far more than the value of those recycled materials.
Its rather akin to post war agricultural policy – the aim was not profitable farming, but increased native production, because the extra food security was considered more important than the subsidy that had to be injected to get that extra production.
If recycling made money the private sector would do it. Steptoe and Son would be millionaires.
“If recycling made money the private sector would do it. Steptoe and Son would be millionaires.”
They do do it, and are making millions:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/04/secret-billionaire-scrap-dealer-making-killing-car-shortages/
Yeah Jim, but steel and similar materials (I believe the technical term is “metals”) are worth recycling. Plastic containers that held your curry from Sainsburys are not. That is why plastic pollutes Third World rivers and seas.
Get a penny on a bottle of pop and that bottle directly is reused.
Chuck it in a bottle bank and the glass has to be broken up and sorted and cleaned and then melted, the wrong type of glass from a handful of bottles can bugger the entire process. Logstically it is a lot less hassle to create straight from sand.
One of the reasons I stick whith home-delivered glass-bottled milke. Though with green-top being hounded out of existence, I’m more and more just going for the plastic stuff.
If recycling costs money then why are we doing it?
Presumably as a practical replacement for pigouvian / sin taxation? Once they have decided there is an externality (resource?) problem with just burying or burning unused resources (waste), then it’s a problem that must be dealt with. As with their view on fossil fuels.
A pigou tax on waste collection to deal with the externalities of waste is obviously counterproductive (dumping), so you attempt to deal with the externalities and add the cost to general taxation (reducing general consumption in the process).
With sewage handling / treatment, they charge as a percentage of water consumption so it can’t be escaped. It would probably be best to fund waste handling (including recycling) from a consumption tax to provide a more direct cost / incentive link. Any direct cost to disposing of waste (even if it’s just buried or burned) will result in dumping.
. . . but losing money is proof of using more resources.
Sorry, I meant to address that more directly with the “externalities” angle. They’re saying we’re robbing the future by wasting resources today, much like they say we’re damaging the future by using fossil fuels today. The future costs of our economic actions are not accounted for in today’s money so they must be measured by the government who will wisely use today’s money to prevent the future costs they measure.
The correct economic term for this incentive process is “fucking scam”.
Years ago there used to be seperate bins in the supermarket carpark where you could stick recyclable stuff. Then they changed to bins where everything went in all mixed together. This made me suspicious that stuff wasn’t being recycled at all or that there was some kind of make-work scheme going on. Now all our supposedly recyclable stuff goes together into our blue bin.
Why should money be scarce?
Is artificially imposed money scarcity being used to create incentives to extract more and more, rather than recycle, simply because monetary policy is ignorant and backwards?
Not really, rsm
It is a question of economic viability. There are things that are worth recycling immediately – metal is the obvious example. Stripping computer boards in large enough volumes might also yield some value, because they have lots of copper and some gold.
Bottles given directly back to the brewery/dairy/lemonade factory are recycled and used as part of the production cycle.
But some things are just hassle and at the end of it we have a product that no one actually wants because the quality is poor or it is easier and cheaper to make from scratch.
In a command economy or time of extreme crisis of course, this would be a different matter. We might well see a tipping point if the gas taps get turned off or oil skyrockets ( further) and many industries have to rethink their processes.
Ottokring, if we read Fischer Black’s “Noise” and agree with him that prices are pretty arbitrary, don’t all questions of “economic viability” become, quite simply, “might makes right”?
If the Fed decided to fund recyclers tomorrow, would we get recycling? If the Fed funded shale oil extraction again tomorrow, would oil drop to $20/barrel again?
If the Fed funded recycling, we’d have glass and plastic mountains. The Mississipi, Humber and Niederrhein will be full of bottles.
Interested,
I’m on a campsite that does a mixed system and apparently it’s all separated by the the company that offers the commercial bin service. I’m not convinced this isn’t a scam.
Otto,
The Pfand system for beer bottles is an excellent example. I think it helps that Germans buy bottled beer by the crate and from what I observed recently they are still, by and large, loyal to their local brewery. If your taking crates back to the place you bought them this takes care of the first mile problem with recycling.
Much of the “recyle” rubbish is broken up and added to tarmac, aggregates etc for roads, foundations etc – ie landfill with many added costs
However, it costs more than virgin material and not as good, thus firms must be paid to use it
Plastic is same: virgin cheaper & better
Only metal recycling makes sense, that’s why scrappies pay for old cars, lead batteries, alloy wheels etc
The green recycle programme is a hugely expensive emotional feel good scam
Burn it or landfill for future generations to harvest if needed
Pcar, hasn’t the market, in its infinite wisdom (/s), decided landfill access is also a scarce resource, so public garbage cans are being taken away and people are encouraged to think externalizing their garbage onto nature just makes neoliberal sense?
Ottokring, what if the Fed paid Amazon to collect old boxes as they delivered new ones?
It is bureaucrats who have deemed landfill sites as “scarce” – it is the root cause of much of the stupidity in our waste management system – there are lots of holes in the ground just crying out to be filled. There’s that one in Arizona… where that meteorite landed for example.
Dry cardboard is worth collecting in its own right. Wet cardboard isn’t, apparently. If I don’t make a fort for the cat out of it, I aways take my boxes to be recycled. Chances are I’ll be wiping my bottom with it soon. You see paper is a substance where poorer quality through multiple use isn’t really an (t)issue. At the end of its useful chain it can always be burnt.
When I was in Ethiopia 40 years ago, working on a petroleum products tanker running out of Assab, there was a small coaster employed carrying beer from the brewery in Asmara. There was great rejoicing every week when she arrived. It was considered anti-social not to return the empty bottles as they were needed for the next shipment. The beer was called, I think, Birra and cost one Birr a bottle. The only other alcohol on sale in the bars in Assab was Medicinal Brandy. Assab and Asmara are now in Eritrea so I presume Ethiopia now has to import its Birra from its neighbour.
“I’m on a campsite that does a mixed system and apparently it’s all separated by the the company that offers the commercial bin service. I’m not convinced this isn’t a scam.”
A friend of mine runs a restaurant, and she tells me the same, her commercial recycling bin accepts everything and then its all separated out later. Like you I suspect this is a lie told to assuage the consciences of bleeding heart customers.
‘Of course we recycle it all’ [while tipping it all into a big hole in the ground]
Beware anyone who uses the word arbitrary as if it meant capricious or worse, unfounded.
It is the fact that markets are arbitrary that allows them to be an alternative to ‘might makes right’. If they were not arbitrary they would be no more than an expression of violence.
@rsm
Plenty of holes to fill – we excavate more than we dump. Only obstactle to filling holes is EU/Brown’s landfill tax Blu-Lab have adopted. Do try and investigate rather than accepting msm fear-mongering & lies
Tax on filling pot-holes next?
Pcar, but why even spend money to find a hole, when you can just dump it on commons?
Grey, if I go to jail because landlords make it illegal to sleep outside on public property for free, how are arbitrary rent prices distinguishable from “might makes right”?
rsm
You are mixing up private and public. The State Apparatus deems it illegal to sleep in parks, just as it deems it illegal to dump rubbish on common land.
As so often, Government interfered in a functioning market/system and screwed the whole thing. EU directives try to encourage recycling by discouraging dumping in landfill. Governments ( not just the GB one) did this by taxing local authorities for landfill use and mandating what is and isn’t allowed to be dumped. It also brought about the phenomenon of fortnightly bin collections and its associated health hazards. Inevitably the councils and their outourced waste firms pass the costs onto the consumer, either through increased local taxes or charges at the dump. These can be quite onerous, especially for businesses on tight margins, where saving a few pounds is important. So inevitably we have an increase in fly-tipping, where unscrupulous firms take your rubbish away at a discount and dump it in someone’s garden.
@Ottokring
+1 Thx