Paying to Recycle

Welcome to the Jackson County Conservation District recycling blog! You can look forward to regular posts about recycling information, events, proper recycling habits, videos, and more!

The first topic is on the cost of recycling. One of the most-asked questions for recycling professionals is, "If recyclable materials have value, why do we have to pay to recycle?"

That question is a really good question. Why are we paying to do the right thing?

To answer that question, consider these two short scenarios following a milk jug, adopted from a DEQ publication on recycling:

If I throw away the milk jug: A waste hauler picks up the milk jug, depositing it in a landfill. The milk jug gets compacted down and settles in as comfortably as possible- it will take approximately 500 years for the milk jug to break down. Everyone generally agrees with the fees associated with landfilling an item: management of liquids and gases, maintenance, closure costs, and long-term monitoring are just a few of the costs of maintaining your average landfill, not to mention that construction costs of a landfill are approximately $500,000 per acre.

If I recycle the milk jug: A recycling hauler picks up the milk jug and transports it, along with the various paper, cardboard, and other items in the bin, and transports them to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), where all of the recycled items get recycled. Costs associated with MRFs include machine operating costs, maintenance, staff, and disposal costs, and construction costs of the MRF are upwards of $11 million. At the MRF, recyclables are sorted, baled, sold, and transported to secondary processors for cleaning before being repurposed into new materials.

In both of those scenarios, a hauler must pick up and transport the milk jug to either a landfill or MRF, both of which have large capital costs.

Recycling costs money because the material must be transported and managed before it can be turned into new products. When you recycle, the costs necessary to transport and process the items support the manufacturing of new materials. When you do not recycle, the recyclable items are buried into a landfill, where they must be managed as waste for several years, if not decades or centuries.