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On August 5, California’s largest recycling collection network, rePlanet, has closed all 284 of its locations, including centers throughout the Westside, and laid off 750 employees. The move follows the closure of 191 centers in 2016 that laid off 278 workers.
Quote:
In a press release, rePlanet announced, “With the continued reduction in State fees, the depressed pricing of recycled aluminum and PET plastic, and the rise in operating costs resulting from minimum wage increases and required health and workers compensation insurance, the Company has concluded that operation of these recycling centers and supporting operations is no longer sustainable.”
Sounds like they were tanking way before the wage increases. That corporate statement blames everything and everyone.
Narrowing it to just wage increases would require me to to ignore the other 7 issues the company pointed to that seem to affect them before the new round of minimum wage increases. I will take their statement as is and not parse it.
Did you intentionally ignore the reference to depressed pricing of recycled aluminum and plastics in favor of jumping on Minimum Wage? It was the combo of increased business costs and falling prices in the recycled aluminum/ plastics.
Looks like California may require grocers to handle recycling or face daily fines.
California is one of ten states that impose a bottle/ can deposit fee. The rate of recycling in these states is multiples of the rates in states that do not provide incentives. Florida is currently considering a bottling tax.
California recycling. Where you have to take a day off work to get your own money back because they all close at 4-430. Beautiful. That or spend your own precious days off standing in long lines of homeless and other subjects just to get your money back.
From a human reasoning perspective without any other criteria - it would make sense to reuse items and the result would be some sort of savings. However...
Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it’s still typically more expensive for municipalities to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill. Prices for recyclable materials have plummeted because of lower oil prices and reduced demand for them overseas. The slump has forced some recycling companies to shut plants and cancel plans for new technologies.
...
As cities move beyond recycling paper and metals, and into glass, food scraps and assorted plastics, the costs rise sharply while the environmental benefits decline and sometimes vanish. “If you believe recycling is good for the planet and that we need to do more of it, then there’s a crisis to confront,” says David P. Steiner, the chief executive officer of Waste Management, the largest recycler of household trash in the United States. “Trying to turn garbage into gold costs a lot more than expected. We need to ask ourselves: What is the goal here?”
The article was rolling along nicely until it mentioned a study on the social costs of recycling and suggested a carbon tax on garbage. Seriously? Most people pay taxes on water and sewage. And what the heck is a social cost?
I do want to note this for those who recycle...
According to the E.P.A.’s estimates, virtually all the greenhouse benefits — more than 90 percent — come from just a few materials: paper, cardboard and metals like the aluminum in soda cans.
Recycle those items. The rest is a waste of time and resources.
Sounds like they were tanking way before the wage increases. That corporate statement blames everything and everyone.
Narrowing it to just wage increases would require me to to ignore the other 7 issues the company pointed to that seem to affect them before the new round of minimum wage increases. I will take their statement as is and not parse it.
This is always the liberal lie. Whenever a liberal policy puts the final nail in the coffin for a business, the response is "they were going to fail anyway." Saw it with smoking bans and bars, seeing it with minimum wage.
Fact is that left wingers don't have the first clue as to what allows businesses to succeed. Never have, never will.
This is always the liberal lie. Whenever a liberal policy puts the final nail in the coffin for a business, the response is "they were going to fail anyway." Saw it with smoking bans and bars, seeing it with minimum wage.
Fact is that left wingers don't have the first clue as to what allows businesses to succeed. Never have, never will.
They just don't care. If a business doesn't pay homage to their dogma they WANT it to fail. It's their Authoritarian nature.
Yeah they were tanking before the increase because recycling for the most part makes no economic sense, which also means its net effect on the environment is an overall negative.
Of course issuing wage floors by fiat makes no economic sense either, but never underestimate the abilty of elected officials in search of votes to ignore science.
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