Super Eco

Photo credit: cr55, stock.xchng

Garbage in ... no garbage out? Belt-tightening consumers seem to be reducing and reusing more than they are recycling. The LA Times reports that San Francisco is disposing of less in landfills than it has in 30 years, while disposal rates in nearby San Diego are on track to bring in the lowest total in 15 years. The end result is a disheartening drop in recycling that touches consumers, city recycling programs, the recycling industry and the environment alike.

It's an intertwined system that appears to be heading still farther down. Consumers are more cautious, buying less and reusing more. They have less to recycle. Commodity prices for recycled materials fall. Recycling profitability falters; costs rise. City budgets get pinched, reducing recycling pickups. Consumers begin sending what recyclables they have to the landfill.

Plants across the country have begun to turn away recycling trucks, reports CNN, and some facilities are charging to take recyclables. This is partly because of reduced demand from local markets and China, the largest market for exported recyclables from the United States.

The silver lining is that a recycling rebound seems inevitable. Experts cited by CNN all insist that it's still much cheaper to recycle trash than to dump it in a landfill and that the market will eventually rebound. "Hopefully, one of the positive outcomes of the recession will be a rethinking of how people deliver products and services that is as environmentally conservative as it is fiscally conservative," said Martin Bourque, executive director of Berkeley's Ecology Center pickup service.