Make Money Out of Recycling
• Children using recycling to make money
The decision to implement a recycle program is typically made by local
government makes based upon its financial ability to cover the cost
associated with recycling and waste management. In recent years,
however, there has been a movement to use discarded and recyclable
materials as a means of making money. Offering a deposit on discarded
materials is definitely a way to encourage recycling and minimising
waste. The paradox is that the cost of recycling and its equipment
usually exceeds the value of the items being recycled. The equipment
used to recycle should also be considered as well; the bags and gloves
occupy space in a landfill also. Maybe even more space than the
discarded items recovered for recycle.
Although burying our discards is the simplest and cheapest way to manage
our waste, eventually that will lead to a shortage of landfill space.
Hence, recycling is a next step for reducing waste. Now that we are
overcome with guilt about all the discarded materials and excess waste
in our little Australia, an incentive to recycle could be just the push
to turn vision to action. Businesses have already been recycling tons of
discarded materials per year. They recycle, voluntarily, newspaper,
office paper, cardboard, aluminum and steel. All for profit. However,
this is not enough. We need buy in from everyone.
Our local government has adopted a philosophy of “rethink, reduce,
reuse, repair and recycle. So in an effort, to minimise the waste to
landfill methods, they have sought to shift some the responsibility to
the consumers by way of providing a method of recycle. However, they
made it voluntary. There was a large amount of media and community focus
on recycling but little effort was made by the local government to
ensure the industry were moving towards the targets set. It would appear
that voluntary participation in recycling would be of a very limited
value unless a few things occurred. First, progress in recycling needs
to be monitored more frequently. With this information, local government
could make decision whether to offer an incentive to recycle or attach
some penalties to failure to recycle. Penalising residents would be a
hard thing to track, however. I would suspect to avoid penalties some
residents would resort to unscrupulous measures, such as disposing of
discarded and recyclable materials in abandoned buildings, fields, and
roadways. It would lead to further regulation of discarded material
which could be more costly. So, it would seem offering the incentive to
recycle, although at first glance it looks more expensive, to be the
more cost efficient choice.
An incentive scheme could assist residents with the collection and
delivery of discarded materials. For example, businesses that deal with
discarded tires have a similar program. These businesses receive an
incentive for developing the technology and equipment to use for the
recycle of tire materials. In fact, this program provides half of the
cost. Impressive, huh? So, the companies develop the initial plans and
then move towards a mature plan later. As such, this industry has seen a
significant decline in illegal tire dumping. As a result, this type of
incentive program has been adopted by other industries, such as Leaky
Pipe Australia which uses old garden hose for the matting in local
playgrounds.
One incentive program could offer a rebate on items recycled by
residents. The Maroochy Shire Council has one that looks to be
successful. It provides it homeowners with recycling bins that have a
transponder on the bin. The transponder would transmit data to the
reader on the collection truck. The rebates offers (credited to
recycling rates) are $20 for 20 or more collections, $15 for 15 to 20
collections, and $10 for 10 to 15 collections. It encourages recycling
with a graduated scale of rebates. Over 10,000 tons of waste was
collecting during the first 3 years that this program was in place. |
