Why Recycling Doesn't Work
What's Wrong with Recycling? The System is Broken In 2018 as I was working as a transfer driver, I asked the dispatcher at the transfer station about why we were taking tons of recyclable materials to the landfill a few miles away. He told me it was because while it was sitting outside for many months getting rained, snowed, and having bird droppings plastered all about it, the recyclables molded and became impossible to recycle. I then asked how much was there. He replied, " 37,000 tons "! To put that into perspective, an eighteen wheeler can legally only weigh 80,000 pounds. That is 40 tons. That weighs as much as 925 fully loaded trucks. It took a couple weeks to get rid of all that garbage and let's not forget the tons of waste already coming in. Let me reiterate, the system is broken. Why is it broken? You saw in the video above that China used to take a lot of the world's recyclable waste. Now that has changed. Bec...