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country restricted imports of certain recyclables, including mixed paper—magazines, office
<br /> paper,junk mail—and most plastics. Waste-management companies across the country are
<br /> telling towns, cities, and counties that there is no longer a market for their recycling. These
<br /> municipalities have two choices: pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or throw it all
<br /> away.
<br /> Most are choosing the latter. "We are doing our best to be environmentally responsible, but we
<br /> can't afford it," said Judie Milner, the city manager of Franklin,New Hampshire. Since 2010,
<br /> Franklin has offered curbside recycling and encouraged residents to put paper, metal, and
<br /> plastics in their green bins. When the program launched, Franklin could break even on recycling
<br /> by selling for$6 a ton. Now, Milner told me, the transfer station is charging the town $125 a ton
<br /> to recycle, or$68 per ton to incinerate. One-fifth of Franklin's residents live below the poverty
<br /> line, and the city government didn't want to ask them to pay more to recycle, so all those
<br /> carefully sorted bottles and cans are being burned. Milner hates knowing that Franklin
<br /> is releasing toxins into the environment, but there's not much she can do. "Plastic is just not one
<br /> of the things we have a market for," she said.
<br /> The same is happening across the country. Broadway, Virginia, had a recycling program for 22
<br /> years,but recently suspended it after Waste Management told the town prices would increase by
<br /> 63%, and then stopped offering recycling pickup as a service. "It almost feels illegal, to throw
<br /> plastic bottles away,"the town manager, Kyle O'Brien, told me.
<br /> Without a market for mixed paper,bales of the stuff started to pile up in Blaine County, Idaho;
<br /> the county eventually stopped collecting it and took the 35 bales it had hoped to recycle to a
<br /> landfill. The town of Fort Edward, in New York, suspended its recycling program in July, and
<br /> admitted it had actually been taking recycling to an incinerator for months. Determined to hold
<br /> out until the market turns around, the nonprofit Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful has collected
<br /> 400,000 tons of plastic. But for now, it is piling the bales behind the facility where it collects
<br /> plastic.
<br /> This end of recycling is coming at a time when the United States is creating more waste than
<br /> ever. In 2015, the most recent year for which national data are available, America
<br /> generated 262.4 million tons of waste,up 4.5 percent from 2010 and 60 percent from 1985. That
<br /> amounts to nearly five pounds per person a day. New York City collected 934 tons of metal,
<br /> plastic, and glass a day from residents last year, a 33 percent increase from 2013.
<br /> For a long time, Americans have had little incentive to consume less. It's inexpensive to buy
<br /> products, and it's even cheaper to throw them away at the end of their short lives. But the costs
<br /> of all this garbage are growing, especially now that bottles and papers that were once recycled
<br /> are now ending up in the trash.
<br /> One of those costs is environmental: When organic waste sits in a landfill it decomposes,
<br /> emitting methane, which is bad for the climate—landfills are the third-largest source of methane
<br /> emissions in the country. Burning plastic may create some energy, but it also produces carbon
<br /> emissions. And while many incineration facilities bill themselves as "waste-to-energy"
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