Today on In the Hive, we take a deep dive into the blue bin. Generally, your curbside recycling gets hauled away by a private company to a sorting plant where the valuable materials are separated out and later sold to national or international processors. But trying to figure out just how much of what goes in your bin actually gets recycled is a tough proposition. The best estimate we could manage: maybe about 21% of what you try to recycle ends up as a new product. But, as you’ll hear on today’s show, that estimate is based on national data, and is dependent on a highly-fluctuating market for recycled materials.
Guests:
Anthony Adams, Wasatch Front Waste and Recycling District Public Information Officer
Larry Gibbons, Director of Business Management at Rocky Mountain Recycling
Roland Geyer, Professor of Industrial Ecology, UC Santa Barbara
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