Science

NYT: The Trash Market Has Crashed

After years of stacking cash by recovering valuable materials from piles of trash, the recycling industry is in free fall, reports The New York Times. Plummeting commodity prices — tin is down 98 percent from its high of $327 a ton earlier this year to $5 a ton — have kneecapped the industry. The economic […]

Trashheap
After years of stacking cash by recovering valuable materials from piles of trash, the recycling industry is in free fall, reports The New York Times. Plummeting commodity prices — tin is down 98 percent from its high of $327 a ton earlier this year to $5 a ton — have kneecapped the industry.

The economic downturn has decimated the market for recycled materials like cardboard, plastic, newspaper and metals. Across the country, this junk is accumulating by the ton in the yards and warehouses of recycling contractors, which are unable to find buyers or are unwilling to sell at rock-bottom prices.

All of which raises a key question: can the market for green products weather difficult economic times, sustained by good will alone?

“Before, you could be green by being greedy,” Jim Wilcox at the Haas School of Business at the University of
California, Berkeley told the Times. “Now you’ve really got to rely more on your notions of civic participation.”

Link: NYT: Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up
Link: MetalPrices.com

Image: flickr/Fredrik Thommesen

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