Recycling Slump is Worldwide

Yesterday I reported on a BBC article about the recycling industry in the UK and the financial nosedive that it has taken as of late. Unfortunately, in today’s global economy, if an industry is suffering somewhere in the world then it’s probably not doing so well elsewhere either. This is true for recycling as well — things aren’t going so well on this side of the pond, and once again it has to do with a slump in manufacturing and supply outweighing demand.

As recently as November, [eight tons of baled cardboard] might have fetched $900 for the nonprofit that runs a north Fulton County recycling facility. This month, the 17,284-pound load sold for $8.63, said Kathy Reed, executive director of Keep North Fulton Beautiful.

The startling drop in the resale value of recycled goods is the result of an international slump in manufacturing, which has cut production of everything from cars to houses. The slowdown is hitting Atlanta’s community recycling programs, where materials such as cardboard, glass and newspaper are worth a fraction of what they were months ago.

As product piles up, some materials are being diverted to composting facilities, or simple stockpiled and warehoused to keep from ending up in landfills. At any rate, it’s simply another reminder that reduce and reuse are the most important words in the three R’s at in this day and age, and the more we can keep from wasting products in the first place, the better off we are.

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm and is filed under The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.