The great recycling swindle
Resolution Recycling used to just collect waste paper, but as of recently offers a complete household rubbish recycling service. You dump your recyclables into a custom wheelie bin that’s a flashy blue and lime green, so the neighbours know how very special you are, and they collect it, sort it, and recycle it.
Great idea, isn’t it? After all, paper is among the least sensible things to recycle, both from a pure environmental point of view and from a commercial perspective. Branching out makes so much sense. This way, the company can make a lot of money buying waste that includes the really good stuff, like aluminium, plastic and glass — material that manufacturers will actually pay for.
So how much do you think they’d pay you for doing them the favour of gathering, separating and making available your recyclable garbage? Not a cent, sucker. They’re not paying you. You get to pay them.
Most businesses have a business model in which they pay for input materials and labour, and hope to profit from subsequent sales. Not this lot. They get paid for collecting their input materials. And what output they can’t sell, they can just dump in the local landfill, at no cost to the company. Pure genius. Profit margins must be sky-high.
Of course, this lot makes the usual false statements and misleading generalisations about recycling. There are plenty. Like much of the rest of its website, the facts about recycling appear to have been haphazardly copied and pasted from other sources. Only one source is acknowledged, and that’s another recycling company! So without reliable sources, let’s just pick one simple example for verification.
South Africans create lots of waste, they say. 540 million tonnes per year, they say. As best as I can determine, this figure, is quoted in several brochures and on at least one environmental TV programme. (Hey, that’s one of the plagiarism sources, go figure!) It appears to date to 1999 and originate with Share-Net, which seems to be a project of the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa.
I say it’s bollocks. That would mean that we produce almost twice as much waste as the United States does (link in PDF), despite having one sixth of the population and one hundredth of its GDP. That would mean all of Johannesburg, which accounts for a third of the country’s GDP and produces a total of 1.6 million tons of waste per year, is about 150 times less wasteful than the rest of the country. That would mean we chuck out almost a ton of refuse per person per month, compared to about 60kg in the wasteful United States.
Granted, this figure would play havoc with the theory that we’re not, in fact, running out of landfill space. At business-as-usual rates, all the US’s waste for the entire 21st century would fit in a landfill that covers 0.009 percent of its land area. This is equivalent to one 30-metre deep landfill of 4km to a side, per state. That’s a sizeable landfill, but it’s tiny in relative terms. At the rate Resolution Recycling claims South Africans dump rubbish, we could cover the entire Karoo in a few years flat. Take that, Yanks!
In short, this figure is deeply suspect. They plagiarised it, and since it seemed to fit their scary marketing message, they used it.
They also say recycling saves costs, uses less energy, pollutes less, and so on. This isn’t true in general, even if it’s true in specific cases. When it’s true, any sensible company does recycle, and pays for it. Bottling plants pay deposits to get glass bottles returned to them. Collect-a-Can has paid R270 million to aluminium can collectors in the last ten years. Another good example is the thriving market in scrap metal. My brass doorbell got stolen not because it was worthless, or the thief wanted to pay Resolution Recycling to get it recycled. It got stolen because the thief gets paid for it by scrap metal dealers who in turn sell their collected and sorted stock to manufacturers, who use it as a cheaper or better input material than virgin metal from raw ore. Telkom doesn’t have to pay cable thieves to recycle copper. They do it voluntarily.
When recycling makes sense, it generally happens anyway, on a commercial basis. You tend to get paid for your valuable waste.
But now, instead of manufacturers who pay entrepreneurial waste collectors for their valuable efforts, Resolution Recycling is hoping to swindle you into paying them for wasted efforts. Paying their fee might make you feel better about yourself. It might earn you sanctimony credits at dinner parties. But in reality, it will either offset the higher cost of recycling when it makes no sense to do so, or (more likely) just go into the back pockets of the swindlers. So you’re poorer, your friendly neighbourhood can and bottle collector is once again unemployed, and… see where I’m going with this?
Good on Resolution Recycling. You gotta love a great swindle. But don’t think that blue and lime-green wheelie bin outside your home is a badge of honour. It’s a sign that you’ve been had.
So what is the solution for companies that want to offer recycling services to their employees and dont have the time to take the garbage to the recycling plants and collect payment to ensure correct and apt capitalism reigns supreme?
Even though you end up paying to recycle arent you providing some benefit to the environment? Or is the environment also being had by Resolution Recycling?
How do you recycle?
How do I recycle? I don’t.
The solution for companies that want to offer recycling “services” to their employees, is not wasting shareholder funds and company effort in an attempt to appear nice and caring, but to rather find a company that pays them for their recyclable material.
If you pay to recycle, you’re not providing any benefit to the environment, when compared to well-managed waste disposal. The point can easily be tested using elementary economics. I don’t buy the alarmism that we’re running out of landfill space, for a start. If that were the case, the price of landfill space would rise, and make alternatives economically viable. The other argument, that we’re running out of resources, is again easily tested. If resources are indeed scarce, prices would reflect this and make recycling profitable enough to pay people and companies for their recyclables. In some cases — metal, some glass — this is exactly the case.
And in those cases, paying a recycling company instead of selling recyclables is shocking practice. Instead of enriching an opportunistic swindler at the expense of shareholders, you could employ, at no cost to the company, an entrepreneurial collector who would sell the recyclables for their own account. Someone who otherwise would be unemployed.
There’s nothing capitalist about wasting money.
The service is only R30. For this they collect and sort your recyclable waste. I would say that, assuming it really is recycled, its a good service. No company will pay for your waste, and if they do, you have to take it to them, and the transport always exceeds what you get in cash. This way you save on dustbin bags, and for me, who lives on a plot and doesn’t have municipal collection, its brilliant. However, I’m fairly sure that they will have some reason to not fetch mine. Testing these things against economic considerations only makes no sense, since many variables in the world are not in the economic cycle. For example, destroying small animals homes by turning them into landfills is not accounted for, since we haven’t reached an advanced enough scientific level to know what we’re doing and how to account for it yet. No doubt we’ll find out what we’ve done in the future, and no doubt we’ll pay for it then.
Paying for a rubbish removal service makes perfect sense. Most of us do so by force, in our rates and taxes, without any choice of who we’d prefer to perform the service, depending on their price and service level.
If, however, they argue that recycling has benefits, then those benefits should show up in the price. If less energy is used to make new stuff out of recyclables than out of raw materials, it will show up in the price, for example. If less landfill space is used, then that will (or should) show up in the price too. If the price is negative, i.e. you get to pay extra, then there’s reason to believe that either the net benefit is also negative, or you’re being ripped off.
As for landfills, the amount of land required for these is vastly exaggerated. They look big in pictures, but in reality, they’re very small indeed. One calculation that illustrates this well is set in the country that produces the most waste per capita of all. If we take into account population growth, and make the generous assumption that US waste production were to continue growing at today’s rate, then all the waste it would produce during the 21st century would fit in a single landfill of one 12 000th of the surface area of the entire country. This could be a single 100-foot-deep landfill of 18 miles to a side for the entire US, or just one landfill per state of 2.5 miles to a side. That’s hardly the sort of land use that would cripple the environment.
We have so much recycled stuff weekly, and we “TRY” to make use of Resolution Recycling, but they just dont seem to be co - operative!
Just not getting the service that they so much promise on there website!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS REALLY SUCKS!!!!
I guess one should use the government recycling service, but wait, their is not one. I work long hours and have a family that i chose to spend my availalle time with. To deliver my recyclables to overfilled dumps takes time, effort and costs money. I guess another option could be to just let the street vendors remove it from my bin. Again i see a problem because the product holds a value. It therefore will fluctuate up and down like a commodity. So when the price of plastic is low and paper high, what happens to the plastic.. does it end up in landfill, with the municipal costs associated to it, becuase the local vendor does not want to cart plastic bottles, which are in essence a lot of air, to the scrap yard that pay by weight. Environmentally friendly, I dont think so. The benefits have in most cases been proven. Picking and choosing what waste gets recycled because of flunctuating prices I do not feel is the best way to do ‘this natuaral economic process’. Nor do i feel dropping ones waste at the dump is the best option. Look at fuel costs and emissions of ones own car.. again a debate. Car vs Compactor. At the end of day, they are a service. They spend money on vehicles and staff to collect the supposed ‘tones’ of valuable waste that are yielding them these mega profits. I can now understand why we are spoilt for choice when it comes to service providers - if its such an easy and profitable business why has no one else done it especially our local government.
I guess culturally we always want something back, nevermind a company that is actually doing something good for a change. We are happy to pay for selfish luxuries that benefit only ourselves.. maybe we are the ones that need to rethink our model.
It’s every person’s responsibility to recycle but very few people actualy do.The reason for this is that it takes time and effort to sort the recycleable garbage and dump it at the designated dumping sites.Not to mention the cost of fuel driving to these sites.If theres a company that provides a service which enables people to recycle and takes the hazzle out of recycling I think it’s just fair that they should be paid for that service.If they’re service is not up to standard then don’t use them.This should be an opportunity for someone else to offer a better service.There is nothing wrong with the business concept of delivering this service.
No, it isn’t every person’s “responsibility” to recycle. Many types of recycling are actually a bad idea, raising the cost of goods, lowering production efficiency, and in some cases even polluting more.
It is, however, every person’s choice to recycle, and those choices are best made in an open market. Some types of recycling make a lot of sense, and when that is the case, you’ll usually find companies offering to pay you for your rubbish. You can then decide if the price is worth your effort. Examples are many metals and some glass. That deposit on a soft drink bottle or a crate of beer bottles is an excellent, market-based means of recycling, for example. You get paid to return waste for recycling.
If recycling really did make sense, Resolution Recycling would offer to pay you to collect your waste, or do it for free but work out a deal by which you don’t have to pay your usual municipal rubbish removers, or arrange a rebate on your rates and taxes for you. That they don’t do so says only one thing: their recycling “service” does not benefit you.
If you end up paying for the privilege of doing something good for someone else, under the illusion that you’re receiving a service, you’re being had. Rather give that money to charity. It’ll be better used.
Surely there is something that so many unhappy Resolution Recycling customers can do. I too have been ripped off.
They don’t respond to emails or phone calls. They just take your money!
Surely they should not be allowed to continue with this business???
It is very clear to me that you have not done nearly enough research into this topic before coming and running your mouth off with assumptions that are simply not true.
Firstly, it is impossible for a homeless person to collect enough recyclable materials to make money with the exception of paper and cardboard. If he was to collect bottles he wouldn’t be able to carry them, plastic is too bulky and light to make money off and anything else is just too difficult for him to sell to recyclers as there are no places where it can be sold in the residential environment.
Secondly, although there figures might be overinflated, the world is facing HUGE issues with regards to the amount of land fill space that we have. Land filling is the most wasteful practice imaginable, especially when most of the materials that are land filled are reusable/recyclable.
Thirdly, by collecting waste and recycling it “real”/”full time” jobs are created.
Fourthly, recycling is a major energy saver. this is a fact and can be seen on ALL manufacturing websites. Look for your self on mondi, consol, nampack, and any other sites manufacturers sites. I have personally been to many of there plants and been told by there employees how much is saved by buying recycled glass, paper, plastic etc…
Think about the process and it is easy to see why.
New materials.
Mining, transporting, processing, transporting manufacture, transporting… and the list goes on.
Recycling.
collection, transport, manufacture… NO MINING, LESS TRANSPORT, LESS WASTE BURIED!!!
Fourthly, the cost of running a recycling collection company are VAST. Fuel, staff, premises, vehicles, storage. to name a few
The price paid to the recyclers are small.
Glass R0.20 p/kg
plastic R0.90 p/kg (weigh it and see how much a kg is)
Paper (mixed) R0.30 p/kg
Those are VERY low prices and to make money you NEED quantities. Even the very best, most diligent street collector with only a trolley can’t make more than R30 a day. Wonderful for him but no solution to recycling in south africa. It does however pay more for him to do that in an industrial area where recycling buy back centers are close and boxes are plentiful. still, R60 would be a GOOD day’s work.
And lastly, “Profit margins must be sky-high.”
Who are you kidding??? If they make R5 from the recycling collected at each house that have done UNBELIEVABLY well. Take into account their new pricing at just over R800 a year and include the wheelie bin they you get free which they buy at R400 and the service works it’s way to about R40 a month.
Where exactly do there “sky high profit margins” come in? The profit margins are minute!!!
In closing, I thin that you are being VERY critical of and excellent idea that is in no way a huge swindle but rather an attempt to get people to wise up to the benefits of recycling. If the government won’t do it then someone else must and i really doubt that internet bad mouthers like yourself will ever step up to the plate and take the reins!!!!
I won’t bother to refute. That would require me quoting Ivo’s post verbatim. But I guess reading isn’t your thing, John?
It used to be such a hassle for me to recycle until I found a Company called Clearer Conscience. Based in Wynberg, Cape Town they have an easy to use system where they not only educate you on what can and cannot be recycled but they also pick up your recyclables and take them to the appropriate places for a very reasonable price. I am so impressed with these guys.
For more info go to www.clearer.co.za
ecomonkey We don’t make promisses we do the right thing, Our aim is to clean up the environment but getting funding to clean up parks not so easy.We don’t make a lot but we do alot. for the environment, and we are able to create job’s and that help’s every one.
The argument against recycling continually argues from a capitalisitic viewpoint. Yes, the landfills may not be scarce enough yet to push up the prices but isnt the entire point of recycling to prevent things from getting to that point. Additionally, the pollution argument looks at what comes out of the production process not at what goes into it. It might produce as much pollution but it certainly doesnt require cutting down as many trees or using up as many natural resources. Worst case scenario recycling is assisting in curbing the rate at which we use natural resources, no?