In the process of making this year's sukkah, I finally got around to clearing Sukkah 2.0 out of the back yard. While the current V 3.0 is made of PVC, Tinker-Toy-like, the older version was a homey, but very heavy and unweildy wooden version. I spent hours pounding a 2x4 frame onto 4x8 sheets of plywood, joining the corners with hinges, creating a swinging door, adding fold-down shelves and the like. While it was great fun to sit in, it took a crew of 3 several days to assemble, and required constant protection from the rain. Eventually, it was more trouble than it was worth.
So I pried it apart, and cut the 4x8s into 4x4s or smaller. When it turned out that the men paid to take away the garbage didn't consider this garbagy enough, but more like building materials, I stacked the against the house and started looking for Plan B.
Plan B was to have them recycled. I take them to a recycler, they pulverize the wood, turn it into new plywood, and re-sell the results. Now since I'm providing their raw material, they should pay me, right? Or maybe just take the wood for free? No, I would have had to pay them something like $6 a linear yard to take the wood. In the case of the plywood, that's coming close to what I paid for the wood in the first place.
If a wood recycling business is only economically feasible when they have to make money on both ends, maybe that says something about the economic value of recycling wood. In the end, especially given gas prices this year, I would have been better off burning the stuff to keep the house warm. Assuming, that is, I could find enough Blue Days to burn all of it. (Eventually, I found a friend who's having his house rebuilt - er, remodeled - with enough room in his dumpster.)
But that's an interesting question. Given the price of gas, I suspect a lot of homes will be keeping their wood for their fireplaces rather than paying extortion rates to subsidize someone else's business. Will that end up having an effect on how much those recyclers charge?