The Greeen Police Are Coming for You. Does Recycling Make Economic Sense?

Some how I missed this Super Bowl ad.  It's an Audi commercial showing how the police will be  cracking down on environmental abusers and if you're driving a "green" Audi you won't have to worry about it.

I saw this story on BigGovernment.com about Cleveland going high tech with their recycling program.

Cleveland is spending $2.5 million for 25,000 recycling bins that have RFID chips that monitor how often the bins are being put out to the curb. If you aren't using them, they'll have someone sift through you trash and fine you if they find too many recyclables there.

The story mentions some financial numbers about their current program.  They mentioned that they have 15,000 household in their pilot program that started in 2007.

Recycling is good for the environment and the city's bottom line, officials said. Cleveland pays $30 a ton to dump garbage in landfills, but earns $26 a ton for recyclables.

The city last year sent 220,000 tons of garbage to landfills and collected 5,800 tons of recyclables.

When you do the math, it works out to earning $10/year per household for the recyclables that the city was able to sell and it saved the city $11/year per household in disposal fees that that trash would have caused.

So that is a net saving of $21/year per household.  The high tech bins will cost $100/household. 

Think about the amount of time and trouble you go through sorting out glass, bottles, plastic, cans and cardboard for the year.  The payback for all of that trouble is $21/year.  Is it really worth it?

We tried it in my household.  We saved cans and bottles and took them to the recycling center.  The man at the center wanted the cans rinsed out and crushed.  When we saw the few pennies we got for all of our efforts, it was really depressing. 

My kids still want to continue because it makes them feel good and it's what they've been taught at school.  I'm not too keen on it all.  One thing is certain, you need a well thought out plan to make it work.  Otherwise you'll be attracting rats and stumbling through the trash.