In the News: Neil Seldman
March 26th, 2019
Media Outlet: Waste Dive
Director of the Waste to Wealth initiative Neil Seldman explains why U.S. recycling will survive despite media narratives that claim the end of recycling is near. Neil and co-author Peter Anderson detail how the recycling industry can adjust and thrive given new circumstances.
Here is an excerpt:
The Atlantic and The New York Times recently carried near identical stories about what they portrayed as the “end of recycling” due to China’s ban on scrap imports from the U.S. They outlined how this sent the price of recycling soaring, causing some cities to begin cutting down or even eliminating programs and sending materials to incinerators or landfills.
They got some of the story right, but omitted the fact that some 20 years ago, Big Waste companies made a deliberate decision to disrupt the then well-functioning dual-stream systems by convincing cities to switch to single-stream recycling. This caused contamination rates to increase and led to the market crunch started by Chinese import restrictions.
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Photo Credit: Elizabeth Regan via Waste Dive
