I’ve always said that the global warming story is just like another product of Vandelay Industries, as some of the more alarming parts foisted on us are simply sitcom variety fiction. Even Jim Hansen’s NASA GISS office has a hilarious Seinfeld component.
Hot on the heels of the $54 million “found money” fiasco at the California State Parks department we have this just outed by the Los Angeles Times: Rampant recycling fraud is draining California cash
It’s like that episode of Seinfeld, where Kramer and Newman load up a mail truck full of bottles and cans to take advantage of the higher payoff in another state.
From the LA Times story:
The illicit trade is draining the state’s $1.1-billion recycling fund. Government officials recently estimated the fraud at $40 million a year, and an industry expert said it could exceed $200 million. It’s one reason the strapped fund paid out $100 million more in expenses last year than it took in from deposits and other sources.
Last summer, the state Department of Food and Agriculture counted all vehicles driving into the state with used beverage containers through 16 border stations. The three-month tally was 3,500, including 505 rental trucks filled to capacity with cans.
More and more, we are seeing connections between green, government handouts, and fraudulent abuse of the system. This isn’t a sustainable path.
Seems it has been going on awhile, it was reported on back in 2008, and we still have nothing done about it.
TedG says (October 8, 2012 at 1:44 pm): “It couldn’t happen to a nice socialist state.”
Heh. I live in the People’s Republic of Kalifornia, but I agree completely. Better to have our tax money spent by Nevadans and Arizonans than by our own politicians. At least this “foreign aid” goes to Americans.
You’re welcome. 🙂
The latest Euro regulation lunacy.
Re-using jam jars is a criminal offence.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/10/07/now-the-european-union-starts-to-ban-recycling/
“The illicit trade…” LOL
Recycling in Reno pays around $0.20/lb. I save up my cans and call this Hispanic dude, who shows up in a big moving van and pays me $1.65/lb. I don’t know what he gets for the cans in CA but it must be worth it to pay me that much in cash and run a truckload up and over Donner Pass 120 miles to Sacramento!
Gunga Din says:
October 8, 2012 at 3:00 pm
The sorting stage is fairly expensive, as it often can’t be done by machine. You also have to have a method of rejecting any chipped or cracked bottles (which you’ve generally already bought). & washing in 180° water (or otherwise autoclaving) isn’t as cheap as it once was.
The raw materials for glass are (oddly enough) quite cheap, & the economies of scale work quite favourably in the manufacturing: to make any glass (from a given furnace) at all you have to use a lot of energy, but since you already have a large furnace (because you’re a glass making factory) & it has to be kept hot for weeks anyway, you might as well put out as much stuff as possible.
If California can soak its tax and rate payers a bloody fortune to make a minute dent in global carbon emissions, I see no reason that same logic should not be applied to the global flood of discarded cans and bottles. Bring ’em on! “Doing good” knows neither borders nor economic constraints!
“Last summer, the state Department of Food and Agriculture counted all vehicles driving into the state with used beverage containers through 16 border stations. The three-month tally was 3,500, including 505 rental trucks filled to capacity with cans.”
So, all this stuff is being counted and allowed into the state to strip the recycling fund. Why don’t these idiots turn them back or arrest and fine them heavily? It would stop pretty soon if there were no profit. I guess all they’re interested in is the fruit in my lunch bag I’m bringing in from out of state. Who’s ordering them to just take notes and wave them on?
Dave
The Left Coast will be having many more opportunities for recycling. From the Beeb:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19812373
Tsunami debris: Oregon braced for winter storms
Good quick read. Among other things, an entire concrete dock from Japan made the trip.
Should be some interesting plastic bottles turned in for recycling. Especially when they figure out they’re from Japan, and the hazmat crews are called in to take possession of the radioactive waste. (I’ve seen news footage of beachcombers examining styrofoam chunks with Geiger counters.)
What caught my eye was the alarming BBC sidebar teaser title: Oregon braced for tsunami debris storms. I was imaging plastic bottles, small foam and wood pieces, and other lightweight stuff raining down after being picked up by violent storms. Hey, you can have fish and frogs raining down, so it’s possible.
Have used a similar system for my own profit: we bought plastic bottles of bottled water, Coke and other drinks without deposit in Belgium and returned them for 25 eurocents just over the border in The Netherlands… That were the same bottles, but nowadays they make a distinction, as the Dutch bottles are more rigid (for obliged reuse) and by giving the Dutch bottles an extra collar, so that the origin is recognized and my profit system doesn’t work anymore…
In The Netherlands, all soft drink bottles (PET or glass) must be reused, even if recycling is less polluting than reuse for plastic bottles: A diesel truck bringing a full load of bottles in return is already polluting more after 100 km (65 miles) than the manufacturing and recycling or incinerating of the transported bottles. That besides the cleaning which needs to be more rigorous for reuse than for recycling…
Some long time ago the environmental impact of one-way vs. return bottles was investigated in Flanders/Belgium. Here the results:
http://www.ping.be/chlorophiles/en/en_pvc_lca_compl.html
No problem. Barcodes will fix everything.
When I take my 30 ton trailer of cans to the Californian depot we can sip coffee while the scan each can to ensure it is locally purchased. Any which are not can be loaded back on the trailer and I will nip over to Michigan or wherever they are from. Half a dozen cans for Michigan, six or seven for Florida…
Steve C says:
October 8, 2012 at 3:05 pm
So you liberated bottles from the storage out the back of the off door too?
DaveE.
On the positive side, I have noticed that the homeless are making a pretty penny on the deposits! 😉
Germany has an even more fun thing, swiss citizens bringing their non-decomposing plastic trash across the border to use the “yellow bag” recycling scheme to pay lower waste bin fees. They pay by weight and don’t have a recycling system set up. On the other hand the same plastic bottles bought in nearby France and the very same bottles bought in Germany are not interchangeable in the deposit refund machine because only the one sold in Germany has the proper logo on the label.
Is there a rule that says you cannot do this?????
Gunga Din’s comment recalled the times I lived in Minnesota. We’d buy cases of beer in long neck returnable bottles. Pay the deposit when we bought the case. When we came back for another, turn in the old case of empties and not get charged the deposit. Local brew pubs here in Oregon and Washington do the same if you want to buy a growler to take home. And in each case the containers would be reused.
On a related topic, you should see the looks I get from people who are “believers” in recycling when I tell them that under current regulations which either encourage or mandate the practice, the collectors of waste are only required to sort and hold the various material for a specific and rather limited amount of time, after which it gets sent to the same landfill as all of the other garbage.
How do you know recycling makes sense? When the people collecting your waste start making it as easy as possible for you to do it. Means they have found a market for it. For years recycling yard waste cost you extra each month for the container. You had to specifically ask for one as well. Then one day they showed up free of charge. Not too hard to figure out what changed.
TimiBoy says:
October 8, 2012 at 2:02 pm
It doesn’t stop there. In Washington State and Oregon, the State mandated minimum wage was higher than the surrounding states. (might still be, I haven’t looked lately)
The result? The drive through order taker job at some fast-food restaurants was outsourced to a call center in Idaho, who would then punch-up the order at the restaurant. (lower minimum wage)
TerryMN says:
October 8, 2012 at 2:44 pm
Well yes, but look on the bright side. California is paying to clean up bottles and cans from Arizona and Nevada. The residents of those states should send California governer Jerry Brown a nice thank you letter.