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« Carnival of the Capitalists | Main | Southwest Plants in Denver - But Can It Grow? »

Recycling Doesn't Pay

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?

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  booklist

Power, Faith, and Fantasy


Six Days of War


An Army of Davids


Learning to Read Midrash


Size Matters


Deals From Hell


A War Like No Other


Winning


A Civil War


Supreme Command


The (Mis)Behavior of Markets


The Wisdom of Crowds


Inventing Money


When Genius Failed


Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking


Back in Action : An American Soldier's Story of Courage, Faith and Fortitude


How Would You Move Mt. Fuji?


Good to Great


Built to Last


Financial Fine Print


The Day the Universe Changed


Blog


The Multiple Identities of the Middle-East


The Case for Democracy


A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam


The Italians


Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory


Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures


Reading Levinas/Reading Talmud