Document Actions
Poaching our recyclables
I found a rather interesting article today regarding urban poachers who are setting up organized systems to nab recyclables from curbsides in San Francisco. Due to the increasing value of substances like aluminum, newspaper, and cardboard, these folks are making a lot of money. In addition to being illegal, the late-night trucks are a nuisance for neighborhoods. And sometimes the poachers take new newspapers, prior to anyone getting to read them!
That got me thinking--I wonder if this has hit North Carolina yet?
Re: Poaching in Cary
Posted by
Mindy Hiteshue
at
07-15-2008 08:34 AM
Great points. I too found a guy looking through a trash bin in downtown Raleigh and pulling the cans out, and definitely felt bad because he obviously needed the money. Of course, that's a different situation since that stuff was going to the landfill and wasn't in anyone's recycling bin. It does make me wonder though how the whole "black market recycling" thing works. Is there like, a dealer? Do they meet in the dead of night to hand off purloined empty Coke cans?
Poaching in Cary
I just posted to the RE3.org blog about this:
Last week I worked from home one day and to my surprise I saw someone rummaging through my recycling bin before the city picked it up. The only thing she took was the aluminum. I am torn by this situation. On one hand - at least the material is getting recycled and I assume the person digging through my recycling bin needs the money she will get from selling the aluminum. But on the other hand – the material is probably the property of the city once I put it in my bin. The revenue associated with the sale of the recyclables is probably keeping my trash and recycling costs down. So will my fees increase if this keeps up?
Evidently in hard economic times this is becoming more common across the country. See this article in the San Francisco Chronicle about recycling “poachers”.
http://re3org.blogspot.com/2008/07/stealing-recyclables.html