BFI, Waste Management Recyclers making money?

Question

I think it is quite odd that trash haulers like BFI and Waste Management ask their customers to recycle and charge them for this recycling, especially when they in turn make money on those items. They should actually be giving money to customers for their recycling which in turn would be used as incentive. Does anyone agree?

There are limited independent recyclers based on these large trash haulers, hard to compete with them.
I worked for a city organization whose job was to pick up used tires and take them to BFI, they would charge $50 a truck load and in turn chop up those tires and sell it for fuel for a paper plant. The greed here is what I am questioning. It is like an oil company charging you to give it your fuel.

Answer 1

It probably depends on how much they really make after running second trucks with second cres to pick up the recycles. Of more intrest to me is why the Conshohocken trash to steam recycling center was supposed to make us money and instead we now have to pay them to burn the burnable collections.

Answer 2

I see it as the whole recycling effort is to keep it out the landfills. I even belong to http://www.freecycle.org/ in my community in an effort to keep the items out of the recycling centers. Land is a precious commodity and we can't keep digging holes in our planet to stuff trash in it.

Answer 3

worked for them for 4 yrs you bet they make a lot of money its called corporate greed

Answer 4

It's a common misconception that commercial recyclers make a lot of money recycling anything. Most of the time it actually costs them money to run a program but they do it as either goodwill or to keep their contract with the city to pick up garbage. For publicly traded companies like BFI, you can check their financials online to see if they really do make any money from recycling. As recyclables are a commodity just like corn, oil, etc. the price fluctuates up and down depending on a variety of factors. If recycling on a large scale were so profitable, you would see more independent recycling companies being formed and entering the market. However, that's not the case. We really should appreciate the BFI, Waste Management, Abitibi's effort to provide any sort of recycling on a large scale.

Happy New Year!!

Answer 5

No, I do not agree that anyone should be payed for their participation in the collection and dispersal of their garbage. What is odd about these recycling companies encouraging the population they serve to be responsible for the disposition of their waste products. How would you discard your waste products in a Eco friendly manner? I appreciate my Waste Management collection service. They separate the waste from the provided containers and process them for distribution to companies that recycle the product into forms that can be used again. There are still many irresponsible members of our population who are insensitive to the value of their contribution to the recycling processes, but they use the products of recycling daily.

Answer 6

In a way "yes". Facts: if the customer follows the recycling rules to the letter, yes, give them @ least cash discounts from the trash bill. Let's not forget(when it comes to ecology) that very seldom people are willing to follow procedures, and simply don't care and mix everything. Question: are you willing to reward this kind of behavior? I don't think so.

Answer 7

I hope so. I hope it's very profitable for them, that way more people will be attracted to recycling.

Answer 8

Collecting and processing waste is very expensive. While a number of materials can be recycled, only a few have significant value, and often the cost of extracting and processing them exceeds their sale value. To the extent that trash haulers make money off of recycling, it goes to reduce the cost of handling low-value recyclables and non-recyclable trash, which means lower bills for you and other customers. If people were paid for their recyclables, it would mean higher trash collection bills, so it would all come out about even.