Our Green Streets Blog

I came across this piece last night, published by the Raleigh News & Observer which paints a fairly bleak picture for the price of recycled materials in the near term:  

When the economy slows, consumers cut back on purchases, and in turn manufacturers ship fewer products. The demand for used corrugated cardboard, for example, drops. Corrugated cardboard, which is used to make packaging, brings about $25 per ton, one-fifth of the $125 a ton it brought in April.

That’s a considerable drop, and I think it’s emblematic of the complexity involved in a lot of the issues raised by our declining economy.  I mean, less waste in the system is one silver lining to the downturn, but I find it ironic that the ensuing decline in demand for recycled materials by the packaging industry might actually lead many municipalities to drop their curb-side recycling programs.  We should all be speaking up and taking action at the local level to try to ensure that such cutbacks aren’t made without exhaustive discussion of all the consequences.

There are other lessons here as well.  Take this for instance:

“…Recycling plants in the Southeast, while affected by the worldwide slowdown, are doing better than those elsewhere in the country because there are more manufacturers in the region that use their recycled material.

“We have a lot of paper mills in the Southeast that recycle paper,” [North Carolina recycling coordinator Scott] Mouw said. “Some of the largest aluminum plants that use recycled aluminum are here. We’re not quite as dependent on foreign markets.”

This seems like the manufacturing equivalent of “buy local,” doesn’t it?  It makes sense for industry that can make use of recycled materials to locate next to the recyclers of such material.  Such synergies should be supported by all who share our planet.  

Scott Mouw goes on to say ”recycling tends to be one of those things that tends to be looked at as a luxury.”  Frankly I’m afraid that he might be right, and yet that possibility really frightens me.  Recycling as a social virtue must not fall by the wayside, the victim of some misguided “cost saving measure.”  We’re past the point of the “recycling-as-luxury” argument.  We need to understand recycling as a civic responsibility if we’re to leave anything of worth to future generations.