Recycling in the United States is in serious trouble. How does it work?

You probably have no idea how recycling works.

Most Americans — who recycle nearly 87 million tons of waste each year — likely think that the plastic and paper thrown into those special blue bins gets sorted by some nebulous government agency and automatically becomes an environmentally-friendly product.

But that’s not how it works. Recycling, first and foremost, is a business.

When recycled goods get picked up by the state’s waste management corporation, they are taken to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) where everything is separated and packaged up to be sent to another facility where it’s processed depending on the material.  Read more…

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