I'm not the best at recycling, but I make an attempt. I recycle paper, glass, metal, and plastic. Every couple of weeks I pack the back of the car and toddle off to the local recycling center. I drop my stuff into the proper bins and am happily on my way.
Recycling has had a noticeable impact on the amount of trash I'm putting on the curb each week. I live alone and most weeks I really don't fill a bag, whereas I used to need two.
Recycling is easy for me to do. I have the option of letting the city collect it, or I can fill up my milk crates and then take it to the center myself, which is what I currently do, or that's what I used to do. Yesterday morning I read that the recycling center is asking residents to store their recyclables for as long as possible. It seems there is no longer a market for it.
Kanawha County Solid Waste Authority Director Norm Steenstra is urging county residents to hold on to their recyclable materials because county officials can't sell them.
"The market has just completely dropped," Steenstra said Tuesday, as bales of cardboard, huge bricks of scrap metal and bundles of plastic continued to pile up - unsold - at the authority's recycling center on Slack Street in Charleston.
They've had to cut employees, eliminate drop-off centers in 6 communities, and now they will no longer accept plastic from the city recycling program.
Kanawha County is not alone, either.
But that, as they say, was then. "About a month ago," says George Sidles, a strategic adviser for SPU’s recycling program, "commodity prices took one of the most dramatic downturns anyone had ever seen." Sidles and Seattle’s recycling staff watched in horror as the going price for paper, metal, and plastics fell off a cliff as the worldwide recession took hold. Copper, steel, and aluminum prices dropped by 75 percent in a month. Recycled plastic went down by two-thirds. Bailed paper — down more than 90 percent.
Canada, too.
"At the end of October, it was business as usual. Now the market for papers, plastic, metals, and glass is practically non-existent."
I can stockpile for a little while, but then what? Go back to throwing all that stuff away? Unlearn all these good habits? I'd really hate to see one thing we can all do, one thing that has become a habit for so many, suddenly disappear.