Recycling: A Green Idea Turns to Gold : Environment: Technology is making it cheaper to create new products from used materials--clothing and shoes from old plastic bottles, for example.
Garbage was never so precious.
The recycling industry, after faltering for years despite public enthusiasm for the idea, has finally hit its stride. Demand is high for nearly all recyclables, and prices have soared for used paper, cardboard, aluminum cans and plastic.
It’s good news not just for the recycling trade but for green-minded consumers who have been faithfully sorting their trash into bins, not knowing that some supposedly recycled materials actually languished in warehouses or ended up in landfills.
“Industry has gotten on the recycling bandwagon because it’s good business,” said D’Anne Mount, a spokeswoman with the Solid Waste Utility of Seattle.
The rebounding economy has increased demand for recycled materials by stimulating production of consumer goods. Technological advances also have helped, making it cheaper to create new products from used materials--clothing and shoes from old plastic bottles, for example.
But industry insiders say the biggest reason for good times in the garbage business is a growing recognition that recycling is more than a passing fad. What started as an environmental gesture is becoming tightly woven into the nation’s economic fabric:
* The federal government, one of the world’s largest paper users, now requires its agencies to buy writing and printing paper with 20% recycled content.
* Major corporations regularly boast of their commitment to recycling. McDonald’s Corp. announced in January that it had spent $1 billion since 1990 on recycled goods for its restaurants, from paper tray-liners to carpeting.
* Paper manufacturers, banking on continued demand for recycled paper, plan to spend $10 billion by the year 2000 retooling and building new mills to make recycled paper, the American Forest & Paper Assn. said.
Companies that once worried about whether recycled products would sell now worry instead about finding the recycled materials they need.
“Prices are up for everything,” said Lisa Rabasca, editor of Recycling Times, an industry newsletter. “Mills and plastics plants find themselves scrambling for feedstock, paying top dollar for material that they often got for a minimal fee only two years ago.”
Nationwide, paper mills paid an average $89 a ton for old newspapers at the end of January, up 424% from $17 a ton one year earlier, according to Recycling Times. Prices increased 210% for corrugated containers, 219% for plastic milk jugs, and 93% for aluminum cans.
The reason for such sharp swings can be traced to the late 1980s, when recycling came to be seen as an environmental magic bullet, in one stroke saving money, sparing natural resources and easing pressure on landfills.
More than 6,600 U.S. communities now have curbside recycling programs, up from about 1,000 five years ago.
Seattle has led the way, recycling 48% of its residential solid waste, the highest rate of any large U.S. city. But other areas are catching up. Nationwide, 22% of all municipal solid waste was recovered for recycling or composting in 1993, up from 17% in 1990, says a new study commissioned by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
“I think most people are looking for ways to reduce waste in their everyday lives,” said Mount. “Recycling is something they can do to make a difference.”
The problem with recycling’s sudden popularity was that the programs were launched with little regard for demand for materials generated. Prices plunged as the flood of recycled materials hit the market. In some cases, there wasn’t any market at all.
Consider the glass heap that almost buried Seattle.
When the city launched its voluntary curbside recycling program in 1988, residents embraced it, diligently sorting their old newspapers, mixed paper, glass and cans into separate bins.
Not long after, though, a pile of broken glass started to grow in the city’s industrial south end. Buyers existed for glass sorted by color, but none could be found for the shattered, mixed-color leftovers that typically comprise one-third of discarded bottles and jars.
By early last year the glass mountain stood 45 feet high and covered 1.5 acres. It was a sparkling monument to recycling’s potential for diverting trash from landfills, but an embarrassing reminder of industry’s inability to make use of all the materials generated.
“We simply didn’t have a place for it to go,” said Nick Harbert, president of Waste Management of Seattle, one of two private contractors hired to run Seattle’s recycling program. “We started stockpiling it, and it just got higher and higher.”
Harbert’s company finally persuaded local construction contractors to try the glass in place of dirt-and-gravel aggregate used under roads and foundations. The contractors liked it, and today Harbert’s glass mountain is a molehill, reduced by 90% in a matter of months.
Such new uses, combined with greater application of old uses, helped make 1994 the year that the glut of recyclables became a shortage.
There still are weak spots in recycling, such as plastics. About 7% of all plastic packaging is recycled, according to the American Plastics Council, compared to 25% of glass containers and nearly 70% of aluminum cans.
But even the plastics situation is improving. Two years ago, some cities were dropping plastic collection from their recycling programs due to a lack of buyers. Now big users of recycled plastic are pleading for new sources of material.
“We need more bottles. It’s simply a nightmare for us,” said Tom Rattray, associate director of environmental quality at Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co., which uses recycled plastic to package products including liquid Spic & Span and Downy fabric softener.
Rabasca cautioned that today’s heady market for recyclables is bound to head downward again sometime. Like any commodity, recycled materials are subject to wide price fluctuations.
But she called the past year’s high prices and feverish growth a coming of age for the recycling industry, one that will give it momentum to endure market swings.
What’s needed now, she said, is continued consumer demand for recycled products.
“We have become masters at separating trash,” Rabasca said. “Now the challenge is to go out and buy things with recycled content. That’s the only way markets will stay strong for recycled materials.”
