DAVID P. STEINER

Modern recycling plants cannot handle certain kinds of items and some like plastic shopping bags and old garden hoses wrap around the machinery and impair the normal recycling process. So human labor is needed to eliminated those items, thus making the process more costly and in many cases making it unprofitable to recycle at all.

This problem was unexpected in the early planning of recycling. At the time. prices that businesses were willing to pay for recycled materials were high enough to allow waste management companies to pay for the cost of the recycling plants and the additional cost of pickup and handling of recycles materials. However one of the consequences of the Meltdown of 2008 and the consequent Great Recession was that manufacturing slowed throughout the world and there was less demand for raw materials in general. Steiner took the position that if society wanted recycling, the public would have to pay in times of low prices. However, when prices were very high, the wast companies made more profits. This statement was the beginning of a public policy and regulation dilemma.

Modern recycling plants cannot handle certain kinds of items and some like plastic shopping bags and old garden hoses wrap around the machinery and impair the normal recycling process. So human labor is needed to eliminated those items, thus making the process more costly and in many cases making it unprofitable to recycle at all.

This problem was unexpected in the early planning of recycling. At the time. prices that businesses were willing to pay for recycled materials were high enough to allow waste management companies to pay for the cost of the recycling plants and the additional cost of pickup and handling of recycles materials. However one of the consequences of the Meltdown of 2008 and the consequent Great Recession was that manufacturing slowed throughout the world and there was less demand for raw materials in general. Steiner took the position that if society wanted recycling, the public would have to pay in times of low prices. However, when prices were very high, the wast companies made more profits. This statement was the beginning of a public policy and regulation dilemma.