I actually wrote a paper on paper recycling, which I haven't published, but I ought to at least get in shape for the web.
Jason DeBacker writes: > Hi all, > Recently, I was listening to a radio program about garbage. It was an NPR > program, so I was surprised to hear them talking about how recycling may not be > worth it. However, they did say that while recycling glass and plastic may not > be an efficient use of resources, the said that recycling paper is. What got > me, is that I never remember seeing recycling centers that pay for pounds of > paper. They pay for aluminum and other metals and even glass, I think, but not > for paper (or plastic). This is and isn't true. The BLS has wastepaper as a component of the Producer Price Index (PPI) -- it's part of the producer index since wastepaper is an input into the production of new paper. The PPI series for wastepaper goes back to the 1940s -- people have been paying for waste paper for a long time. But.... > If recycling paper is worth it in terms of saved energy and raw material usage, > wouldn't someone be paying for scrap paper? What are the major factors > determining the value of goods in the recyclables market? The intersection of supply and demand, like for everything else. The difference is, in the 1980s municipalities started forcing people to recycle through legislation and regulation. The result was a massive increase in the supply of wastepaper -- and a corresponding drop in price, to basically zero. Think about it: In a free market, you bring your paper to the recycler if and only if the price they pay makes it worth your time. But if they local city passes a law with hefty fines for putting paper in the regular garbage, and curbside pickup of wastepaper, then more people with turn in their paper. Supply increases, demand stays constant, so price drops -- in this case, to nearly free. There are two weird things about this. First, I talked to people running municipal recycling programs, and they told me that what's really driving this from their point of view is "tipping fees" -- that is, the price of dumping garbage at the dump. One of these folks explicitly told me that all the "save the world stuff is just for publicity" -- to get people to go along with the program to reduce the cost of disposing garbage. However, this is not true in every case -- some cities actually pay someone to take their waste and promise to recycle it. These people then turn around and sell it to producers, thus being paid on both the input and output side. Since the recyclers charge more than the dumps, I believe this can only be explained by ideology. That is, they are maximizing a function that includes the good feelings they get from knowing their garbage is recycled. (And voters are willing to vote on that basis, etc.) > Another question might be, why do people pay for a service that picks up > recyclables at their door- why doesn?t anyone offer to take them for free (or > even pay) so that they can then cash the used good in at the recycling center? When my father was in Boy Scouts (1950s), his troop did exactly that as a fundraiser -- they collected newspapers from neighbors and sold them to somebody who made it into new newspapers (possibly with some intermediaries). He says this was a very common fundraiser for youth organizations in those days. I remember my grandmother keeping stacks of old newspapers for local scout troops well into the 1970s. I have also heard many stories of municipalities (including Arlington County, VA) passing laws prohibiting people from "stealing" the recylables people put out at their curbs. Apparently, people would go out on pickup day ahead of the "official" trucks, collect recyclables, and sell them to the recycling center. This cut into the city's/county's revenue (since they were selling the stuff to pay for the pickup system), so it was outlawed; a bunch of homeless people got arrested for stealing the garbage. (!) Nowadays, the increased supply from municipal recycling is so huge and the prices so low I don't hear much about theft of recyclable garbage -- and nobody collects newspapers as a fundraiser anymore. --Robert Book [EMAIL PROTECTED]
