Talk:Recycling

The 'recycling bin' image?

The image on the right certainly doesn't look like a bin at park in northern California. Would anybody replace the image with the correct one, or remove it from the article?

Surcharges

In the supply section of the article 2nd paragraph

(Container deposit legislation involves offering a refund for the return of certain containers, typically glass, plastic, and metal. When a product in such a container is purchased, a small surcharge is added to the price. This surcharge can be reclaimed by the consumer if the container is returned to a collection point. These programs have been very successful, often resulting in an 80 percent recycling rate. Despite such good results, the shift in collection costs from local government to industry and consumers has created strong opposition to the creation of such programs in some areas.)

the last line states that

• 1. there is a shift in collection costs
• 2. the industry and consumers are now paying for the collection costs.

I believe this is just a misunderstanding of the concept that the money you receive when returning the packaging is actually additional money that you spent when purchasing the item. this forces the consumer to return the packaging if they do not want to be the one paying for the disposal of the item.

02:03, 16 January 2012‎ 206.248.172.126 (Talk)‎

Cities at the forefront of recycling

Perhaps a list is useful ? ie Quan Do, ... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.130.150.170 (talk) 15:15, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Constraints

A major constraint in the optimal recyling of materials is that at civic amenity sites, products are not disassembled by hand and have each individual part sorted into a bin, but instead have the entire product sorted into a certain bin.

This makes that extracting of rare earths and other materials is uneconomical (at recycling sites, products typically get crushed after which the materials are extracted by means of magnets, chemicals, special sorting methods, ...) and optimal recycling of for example metals is impossible (an optimal recycling method for metals would require to sort all similar alloys together rather than mixing plain iron with alloys).

Obviously, disassembling products is not feasible at civic amenity sites, and a better method would be to sent back the broken products to the manufacturer, so that the manufacturer can disassemble the product, for example for making new products or atleast to have the components sent seperatly to recycling sites (for proper recyling, by the exact type of material). At present though, no laws are put in place in any country to oblige manufacturers of taking back their products for disassembly, nor are there even such obligations for manufacturers of cradle-to-cradle products.

add in article KVDP (talk) 10:54, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Shawn Burn study

I edited the part about the Shawn Burn study to say that personal contact is more effective than impersonal contact at increasing recycling rates in a community. It originally said that the study had determined that personal contact was "the most effective" method. 69.251.37.117 (talk) 14:34, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

jobs creation

the two questions a) whether recycling results in net job creation and b) whether net creation of low paid, hazardous jobs is a good thing, are worth discussing. However, the following statement is meaningless:

It is said that dumping 10,000 tons of waste in a landfill creates six jobs, while recycling 10,000 tons of waste can create over 36 jobs.

Someone who has knowledge of the subject should replace this with a meaningful discussion of this question. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.182.27.180 (talk) 19:12, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Job creation is distinct from, and usually counter to, economic efficiency. If recycling requires 36 jobs vs. only 6 for landfilling, this implies that recycling is significantly more expensive.