The extensive sorting increases the production costs of recycled plastic pellets.Īs a result, buying and using recycled materials is not a cost-effective option. Nowadays, significant recyclable waste is “managed” by being burned or buried.īecause we are terrible at recycling properly, the recyclables that are collected by waste haulers requires a lot of sorting. The result? Recycling facilities have an oversupply of low quality plastic that no one is buying. In North America, we have not built the infrastructure required to manage this new massive influx of recyclables that we can’t ship anymore. Within a matter of days, recycling facilities and landfills reached capacity. This policy poked holes in waste management systems across the globe. The “National Sword” policy also banned the import of contaminated trash. Contamination is the single point of failure for our recycling systems worldwide. In the US alone, a whopping $11.4 BILLION worth of recyclables end up in landfills every year. There are a ton of statistics out there illustrating how bad this problem really is. And, what happens to recycling bins/bags that are contaminated? Multiply this scenario by all the other things that end up in our recycling and you get a mixed bag (literally) full of things that simply don’t belong. They thus contaminate the bag of recyclables, as the entire bag can’t go to a recycling plant. Many well-intended people dispose of these cups in recycling bins. Coffee cups are lined with a waxy coating that ensures your drink doesn’t ooze out five minutes into your morning commute. If you ask anyone in waste management (and we’ve asked many waste management teams) what the largest industry-wide pain point is, they will all say it’s contamination.Ĭontamination is when waste materials end up in the wrong place. Despite the technological revolution overturning industries around the globe, waste management remains a paper-driven dinosaur of an operation.Ĭontamination: The number-one issue in waste management The waste and recycling industry is an old and dirty business, ripe for change. We don’t really know what - or how much - goes where. As long as our consumption habits persist, cities and businesses can expect waste management to become a bigger and bigger problem - unless we start using technology to improve our waste management systems.Īt the moment, the average rubbish bin or trash can is just a hunk of metal or plastic. More people means more consumption, which means there’s more waste to deal with. The rapid rise in our global population has not made the waste industry any smaller.
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