Why don't we just recycle AT the landfill?

 Still at the Bariloche Recycling Association. This facility had so much going for it, it needed two posts.
I had yet to see something that quite like what was going on here in Bariloche. Notice that The Bariloche Recycling Association's building is across the street from the landfill. How convenient.

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 Here in Barlioche, the recyclers source directly from landfill. Some of the workers are in the building baling the bags of sorted material, but the majority of the workers are here in the open landfill waiting for the next truck to arrive with the City's garbage. They pull out plastic, metal, and fibers form the waste stream as soon as it hits the ground. And yes, they also have the landfill with the best view in South America, something they were proud to point out.

When I first arrived in Bariloche I took note that the City had no recycling effort. It was only after I found this gem that I realized that not only was the City recycling, but they were recycling quite well actually. The municipality pays the workers some money and helps with upkeep with the building, but the majority of their income comes from the sale of their baled commodities. This gives them a very strong incentive to pull all they can out of the landfill.

At the time of my visit they were building a 2nd, larger building to relocate the recycling balers. Also, a plot of land was being prepared to start composting. I've yet to see composting on a municipal level in South America and I can't wait to return in a couple years to see how it turns out.

The cleanest market-ready bales I've ever seen

So not the most interesting pictures here at the Asociación de Reciclaje de Bariloche (Bariloche Recycling Association) but if you look closely with a recycling geek's eye... you'll notice that these bales are incredibly clean. By clean I mean free of contaminates. Only materials that are suppose to be in those bales are in those bales.

 Only green and blue PET are suppose to be in the front bales and only clear PET is suppose to be in the back bales. If you look closely (which I did) that is all you will see.

 I have never seen such clean bales before in the United States. Sure our tonnages may be much higher, but the quality of US bales ready for market are not this clean. Why? The folks here at The Bariloche Recycling Association sort everything by hand (much like Bogota). There is no conveyor belt moving items past them at high speed, there is no machine blowing air at different colored plastic launching them into the correct bin, there is no magnet pulling up steal, there is no electric charge flinging away the aluminium, and there are no gears or wheels carrying away cardboard.

Tonnages here may be incomparable to a MRF (Materials Recovery Facility) in the states, but I'd bet the buyers of these commodities are pretty pleased with the material they are receiving. Part of the reason more and more paper mills are going out of business on the west coast is that bales of fiber they buy from the recycler carry too many contaminates. Those contaminates damage their equipment and make using a recycling feed stock unprofitable. The less buyers of recycled material in the US means a heavier reliance on markets overseas.
Remember, recycling won't happen if no one will buy what you are trying to recycle.

Landfills. Sort of....

Tupiza, Bolivia Landfill

Here in Tupiza, like many other Municipalities, refuse is taken to the local dump where it is....well, dumped. Just dumped. In the States, the EPA and other environmental governing agencies require landfills to apply a cover after each day of adding garbage. It is called Alternative Daily Cover (ADC) and it usually comprises of dirt, wood chips, industrial plastic scrap, even organics sometimes. The cover is meant to stop the escape of methane, and of course rouge flying plastics among other things.

In South America, I have yet to see a covered landfill. In this example, trash blows off the landfill every time the wind blows and debris can be found miles away form the landfill.
It makes one wonder why bother to collect garbage and bring it to a central location if it is bound to blow back into the surrounding landscape anyway? I often times find myself disgusted by the amount of litter in South America, but seeing such landfills makes me realize that sometimes throwing the item in the trash bin isn´t much better.

These folks are picking out the PET and stuffing it in SuperSaks. They were also picking out some clothing items. Unfortunately they declined to speak with me so I am not sure where they sell the PET and for what price. It was incredibly difficult to walk anywhere near this landfill as the flies and smells were overpowering. I have been around a lot of garbage and have certainly sorted through my fare share of trash and compost but I have a powerful respect for the people pictured above.

Tilcara, Argentina Landfill

No litter pickers at this landfill in Argentina. I have yet to see any plastics recycling efforts in the Northern part of the country. I assume it is the lack of any nearby market/buyer.
This landfill is in a river basin. When the water rises, it also picks up the plastics and other debris that has blow off this uncovered landfill. Again, it makes one wonder...what is the point of collection here? I saw a lot of glass here as it is one of the items that won´t blow or float away.