Off-Topic: Recycling

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	Name:	MartiniMan -
	Subject:	Recycling
	Date:	12/10/2009 10:47:46 AM

Hound: the lack of recycling in rural areas is pretty easy to explain. First, the reason recycling in urban areas is more prevalent is that you have a sufficient density of population to generate sufficient volume to justify the extra cost of a recycling program. Secondly, because of the higher population and the resultant large volume of garbage, landfill space is much more valuable and any reduction in waste going to the landfill extends its life. Third, because of the population density and the NIMBY (not in my backyard) attitude in the northeast it became very difficult to permit new landfills or even to amend existing permits to increase landfill capacity. It doesn't help that a large number of landfills in the northeast are very old and the original cells were not designed as well as they are today so you had lots of releases of contamination that the public is very well aware of. Finally, urbanites tend to be more liberal and more attuned to the environmental impact of packing so many people into a small geographic space and therefore they demanded recycling even when it did not make economic sense.

You have neither the socioeconomic drivers nor the political impetus to force recycling on more rural areas. Put simply, there aren't enough people making enough trash for it to make sense, especially given the ready access to landfills.