This New York Times photo shows how cardboard once bound for recycling is piling up as a result of the crashing recycling market.

For a while there, it looked like a stagnant economy would be a recyclers best friend.

With energy prices sky-rocketing and the price of raw materials going through the roof, making things with with other things was starting to look like a smart move economically as well as ecologically.

But what an economic slow-down giveth, a full-blown recession can take away.

Just as Pottstown tries to bolster its struggling budget bottom line by recycling its way to garbage pick-up parity, it looks like you can add recyclables to the list of markets bottoming out in this God-awful economy.

Many green types, like those populating the corporate offices of The Thin Green Line, have always argued municipalities should recycle because its the right thing to do, reducing the amount of trash we bury in zip-locked landfills, ecological time-bombs we've kindly set for future generations.

Then the economy went crazy and suddenly, there was a whole new argument for increasing recycling, it would save you money like crazy. This was the kind of argument even the most landfill-loving politician could get behind.

But the market is a harsh mistress and now, um, not so much.

According to this Dec. 7 article in The New York Times, "trash has crashed."

"There are no signs yet of a nationwide abandonment of recycling programs. But industry executives say that after years of growth, the whole system is facing an abrupt slowdown.
Many large recyclers now say they are accumulating tons of material, either because they have contracts with big cities to continue to take the scrap or because they are banking on a price rebound in the next six months to a year," the newspaper reported.

“We’re warehousing it and warehousing it and warehousing it,” said Johnny Gold, senior vice president at the Newark Group, a company that has 13 recycling plants across the country. Mr. Gold said the industry had seen downturns before but not like this. “We never saw this coming.”

Poor guy is starting to sound like an auto industry exec.

In the meantime, poor Pottstown is gearing up to increase its recycling stream, preparing 65-gallon toters for distribution around down and preparing what they're saying will be a massive public education campaign to increase participation.

The selling point has been that the more we recycling, the less we landfill, the lower our trash bill will be; all of which makes sense so long as there is a market to take the recyclables to.

Sadly, if the market stays collapsed so too will that argument, and just as people are being urged to recycle more to save money, it won't save money and that extra motivation will evaporate just at the moment when people's habits stand to be most permanently changed.

I suppose it's too much to hope for that recycling will increase simply because it's the right thing to do.

There is no shortage of information out there about the effect high oil prices are having on everything from driving habits to foods costs. You may have seen some of that information right on this here blog.

Undoubtedly, it is yet another demonstration of how much our economy turns on the cost of energy.

But this story in Reuters demonstrates just how extreme those effects can be and raises a few questions for the greater Pottstown area.

The story, if you don't have time to read the link, talks about the rising value of plastic buried in landfills.

Most plastic is made from petroleum in some form or another, so as the cost of oil goes up, so too does the value of products made from oil.

The story, which comes out of Britain, notes that prices for high quality plastics such as high-density polyethelenes (HDP) have more than doubled to between $370-560 per ton, from just a year ago.

So it's time to ask the question.

Having just about finished the final closure plan for the Pottstown Landfill, and having just signed a contract to treat its leachate, is it time to think about opening it up again to dig up the plastic?

This idea would probably has almost as many ups as downs.

On the down side, who knows what's buried there, particularly in some of the old sections that were filled long before regulators paid any attention to what was buried in the ground. Mining it could cause exposure to those hazards.

On the other hand, having a way to make a profit by digging it up could provide a financial incentive to the landfill owners, Waste Management, to investigate what's in there and ensure it is disposed of properly, all while looking for plastic in landfill sections that were filled long before recycling programs became prevalent.

Seeing as much of the leachate (the contaminated water that percolates through the landfill's trash) comes from the section of the landfill that has no cap, having something of value inside could make if affordable to dig it up and re-cap it using modern standards. Of course, that's a decision only Waste Management can make. Their landfill, their call.

Certainly, as two Berks County landfills explore ways to get energy out of their facilities by pumping and exporting cumbustible landfill gas, mining a landfill for plastics is yet another avenue by which we can recover energy from our buried waste.

But before we rush into anything hastily, we should consider the effect on the atmosphere of returning all that plastic to burnable fuel and whether the harm it's resulting greenhouse gases and toxins could cause to the environment doesn't outweigh the benefit of taking it out of the landfill.

Due to unfortunate budget cuts, the once-vast research department at The Thin Green Line is severely depleted and we cannot yet conduct that anaylsis, but the "harms/benefit analysis," as the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection likes to call it, should be done nonetheless.

Of course, the best (and least expensive) way to capture the fossil fuel energy trapped in plastic is to not send the plastic to the landfill in the first place. Yes, I'm talking about recycling.

Jim Crater over at Recycling Services Inc. in North Coventry has become a master of matching recycled materials to markets that want them. But by its nature, his effort is limited in scale by how many people bring their recyclables to the center. (Count me among them).

(Equally masterful are his volunteer specialists whose sharp eyes and sharp wits allow recycling numbskulls such as myself to make sure the No. 6 plastic goes in the No. 6 bin.)

But a truly global market for used plastic offers an opportunity for truly large-scale recycling, particularly on a municipal level, because it would not be as hard to find buyers.

So perhaps its unexpectedly good timing that the Borough of Pottstown is embarking on an ambitious program to boost its recycling.

It's driven by simple municipal economics. It costs a lot to get rid of trash at a landfill, so the more trash you keep out of the landfill, the less it costs to collect the trash and the fewer people come to yell at you at borough council meetings.

Toward that end, borough council has voted to purchase new 65-gallon recycling bins to make recycling easier for residents, and to encourage less trash going to the landfill.

You'll be able to throw it all in, cans, plastic bottles, paper, junk mail. If you have any questions, a label right on the bin will tell you what can go in.

The borough intends to test the new bins in each of the borough's five wards and The Thin Green Line has offered, and the borough has agreed, to be one of the guinea pigs.

When the bins arrive, our staff of one will let you know how it works, how its working in my house, and perhaps help you avoid some of the unexpected pitfalls that often accompany any new venture.

In the meantime, start looking at those soda bottles as something other than just something to get rid of.

Just a quick one here folks to make sure you know about this Saturday's hazardous waste and computer collection program, run by Montgomery County.

It will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the parking lot of the Spring-Ford Flex School, 833 S. Lewis Road just outside Royersford in Upper Providence.

Here is a brief rundown of the stuff that can be disposed of for free:

Automotive Stuff: Motor oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, antifreeze, gasoline, kerosene, car batteries.

Household Stuff: Drain and oven cleaner, spot remover, dry cleaning fluid, rug cleaner, rechargeable batteries.

Paint Stuff: Paint thinner, turpentine, paint remover, OIL-based paint, furniture stripper and finisher.

Miscellaneous Stuff: Dyes, lighter fluid, photographic chemicals, asphalt sealers, swimming pool chemicals.

Computer Stuff: Monitors, CPUs, mice (but no rats), keyboards, scanners, printers, fax machines, copiers, cameras, cell phones.

For more information, click here and click on the recycling and HHW links or call (610) 278-3618.

So here I thought I could dash off a quickie blog (you readers really are insatiable you know!) about historic preservation, vs. sustainability, vs. energy efficiency and move on.

Sigh.

Instead, it turns out to be as frustratingly complicated as nuclear physics, or code enforcement as the case may be.

So instead, genetically incapable of over-simplifying, I suspect I am going to have to devote several blogs to the subject.

Don’t hate me because I’m compulsive (and let me know if I’m boring you.)

The way I look at it, this is all Tom Hylton’s fault.

Most Pottstown readers know the name and it was after interviewing Tom several times on a variety of subjects over the years that I came to understand, piece by piece, the philosophy behind his landmark book, “Save Our Land, Save Our Towns.”

Then I went and read it and, imagine, my understanding improved!

If you are unfamiliar, it’s easy enough to find on the Web – saveourlandsaveourtowns.org – and there you will find the basics.

Having grown up in a little village in New York, where the post office, deli, library, grade school and pizzeria were all less then a block away and required no gasoline to reach, I have watched with dismay our open spaces being consumed by redundant shopping malls and “McMansions.”

What I didn’t realize, when it came time for my wife and I to buy a house ourselves, was how much I had been programmed by advertising and the choices of my peers to want one myself.

Then I met Tom, who helped me see what I’m ashamed to admit I should already have known: That towns and country are the two natural states for human communities that have evolved over the centuries and the thing that tries to be both -- suburbs – are really just an aberration invented after World War II by former soldiers who had been trained to believe that everything can be compartmentalized.

But you don’t just buy a house with your head, and the urge to look at new construction was much stronger than I had anticipated.

Luckily, there’s plenty of blame to spread around here in Pottstown. I also happily blame Sue Krause.

Tom got my head, but Susie got my heart.

The house in that New York village having been an old one (built before the Civil War), I was pre-destined to appreciate older homes – particularly the craftsmanship I am (also genetically) incapable of re-producing myself.

One trip on the Historic Pottstown by Candlelight tour, or whatever it is Susie's organization, the Historic Neighborhood Association, calls their most excellent Christmas-time tradition, and my wife and I realized how much we would love to own a beautiful historic home – and that in Pottstown, we could actually afford it.

We were hooked.

Which brings us (the long way) back to the subject at hand.

How green are old buildings?

I’ve already blogged (I can’t believe that’s a verb now) about air conditioning and we’ll return to it when it gets hot again and on our minds. (Thanks to my three responders)

We’ll also get to things like replacement windows and heating systems at some point. (This whole blogging thing is not well-planned out people so cut me some slack. I have a real job you know!)

But I was taken recently, through a link in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer story, to an interesting point raised by someone named Knute Berger.

In an article -- http://crosscut.com/mossback/14832/Unsustainable+Seattle/f -- he wrote the following when writing about replacing old buildings with “green” buildings.

“But rarely do they factor in what is called ‘embodied energy,’ which is the energy used to build something in the first place. A building is the physical manifestation of all the carbon used to create it in the first place. Tear it down, you not only have a solid waste problem with all the debris (about 30 percent of waste comes from construction and demolition debris), but you waste all that embodied energy.”

He, in turn, quotes an expert named Donovan Rypkema, who gave a speech in Seattle which included the following: “Razing historic buildings results in a triple hit on scarce resources. First, we’re throwing away thousands of dollars of embodied energy. Second, we’re replacing it with materials vastly more consumptive of energy. What are most historic houses built from? Brick, plaster, concrete and timber. (Certainly true of my house here in Pottstown). What are among the least energy consumptive materials? Brick, plaster, concrete and timber. What are major components of new buildings? Plastic, steel, vinyl and aluminum. What are among the most energy consumptive of materials? Plastic, steel, vinyl and aluminum. Third, recurring embodied energy savings increase dramatically as a building stretches over 50 years. You’re a fool or a fraud if you say you are an environmentally conscious builder and yet are throwing away historic buildings, and their components.”

Adds Berger: “When you calculate embodied energy and building longevity, Rypkema says, it makes sense to save a less energy-efficient building that lasts 100 years, than a 24 percent more-energy-efficient building that will last only 40 years. And much new construction, as you may have noticed, is not built to last.”
Now THAT, is a truly interesting perspective, at least from my perspective; that fixing up old buildings is actually recycling of the highest order.

What do you think?

I’d like to continue this conversation.