Green Cotton

Used paper at a recycling center in Beijing. Photosource: NY Times taken by Doug Kantor.

As the economy continues to falter in the U.S., the world has followed suit, reminding us just how inter-connected we are. One question that persists for us here at Green Cotton is as the prices of commodities fall worldwide, what is happening to the world’s waste?

An article in today’s New York Times by Dan Levin addresses this exact issue. Reportedly in China, 70% of all recycled goods are shipped from Europe and America. Last year alone, the United States exported 11.6 million tons of recovered paper and cardboard to China. The worth of trash has recently fallen to an almost unworkable price. This decrease in the value of trash means hard times for all those reliant on trash picking, as well as the middlemen who buy waste products with intent to process and then sell them to stores and construction sites.

Some European and American companies who have made their money from selling recyclables to China in recent years are finding their shipments rejected by Chinese buyers after they arrive in China. Even those who are not rejected are seeing a 50 to 70 percent drop in commodity prices since just 2007. For example, a ton of copper that went for $8,000 in 2007 now sells for only $3,000, and a ton of Tin that sold for $300 in 2007 is now only $5. Such drastic drops in prices have led many in the industry to question whether recycling is worth it, as it is often proving unprofitable.

So as we saw a few months ago in our post on the decline of the recycling market in the US, we are now seeing similar trends worldwide: which is a huge problem when it comes to build up of waste.

George Adams, president of SA recycling, which processes metal at 40 recycling plants in the Western United States, experienced a devastating $10 million dollar loss in October 2008 alone. It is not only private firms that are considering closing their doors on the recycling industry, but also public programs. Now that town programs are being forced to pay recyclers to take waste off their hands rather than getting paid for their recycling, these programs are costing town’s money instead of creating revenue. For this reason, the value of the public recycling programs is being questioned.

It seems, in the end, the environment once again is the hardest hit in this economic downturn. With lowered incentives for businesses and town’s to keep up their recycling programs, the trash continues to build up and ultimately this will impact individual households incentives to recycle as well as towns, cities and states.

One solution is to continue searching for and purchasing products in the marketplace that are made out of recycled products. Even if they cost slightly more, it is beneficial to support these products, since they will continue to put pressure on the recycling market to keep it going. In addition, we can all put pressure on our town committees, our senators and local politicians to keep these valuable programs going.

Fore more on this issue, see the NY Times article as well as our earlier post on recycling challenges in the US economic downturn.