MORAL CONFUSION:

When Operation National Sword took effect in 2018, China insisted that it would accept only the noncontaminated recyclables that its manufacturers could use. As a result, the market for recyclables collapsed, and imports from the U.S. and elsewhere plunged.

Since then, newspapers and other materials that municipal sanitation departments (or private firms) had picked up from city residents, who had dutifully sorted the materials and placed them in blue boxes, have increasingly piled up in warehouses or have been sent to landfills. Yet, despite their reputation, landfills--once infamous for leaking into groundwater--have become federally regulated and are far more environmentally safe. It remains true that recyclable materials may be reused--but there is no assurance that this will happen, especially for plastics.

Meanwhile, the economics of municipal recycling has been turned upside down. Those city departments responsible for trash pickup now incur significant costs, over and above what they would have to pay in the absence of recycling. These costs include the personnel and equipment for separate additional refuse collection (or payment to a contractor to provide the service), as well as the cost of paying firms to accept recyclables, now that they no longer can be profitably resold.

Some recyclables--notably, aluminum cans--continue to have a relatively high market value. But they are mixed with other materials that have little value and therefore require expensive sorting.

Tweet   @brothersjudd