Recycling in the US: An off-again, on-again love affair

During my childhood, recycling was an informal, ad-hoc process. We used to buy soda in flip-top bottles that went right back into the crate and got taken back to where we bought them. The bottles were refilled often enough that their painted labels started to wear down. Our newspapers (which were, in fact, paper) got put in the garage until the local Boy Scout troop had a paper drive, where the papers went into a dumpster and were carted off for reprocessing.

But two-liter plastic bottles eventually killed the soda supplier, and a crash in paper prices caused the Boy Scouts to move on to other sources of income. Recycling was a fragile thing, easily broken by forces that had nothing to do with its inherent value.

Fast forward many years, and we're recycling on a massive scale, building centers that perform amazing feats, mechanically separating out a huge array of raw materials. And these materials aren't only valuable in their own right; they save the parties involved significant amounts of money by staying out of landfills. Recycling is a big and growing business, and today it's certain to be a permanent fixture on the global landscape.