At the Dry Gulch Recycling Center, the line
starts earlier and grows longer these days
as people like Debbie O'Brien give in to the
latest, most socially conscious craze.
Before I started recycling, I just trashed it
like everyone else.
Put it out in plastic bags?
Put it in plastic bags, which I'm no longer
using. I'm using paper now.
And baby boomers are now teaching their own
babies about the virtues of recycling.
I certainly want to get across to them the idea
that there's something that can be done with
the stuff
besides just throw it out in the yard or even
just throw it in the dumpster.
In the past month, the trash here has doubled.
But there is a price to success, a dropping price.
Following Earth Day, these recyclables have
been piling up faster than they can be sold.
And that situation area-wide has led to a drop
in prices.
Dry Gulch earns 75% less than it once did when
it sells paper.
A third less for aluminum, and soon it will get
nothing for glass.
Although the center now handles more, it earns
less and has had to cut back worker hours.
Because a lot that you see around us, we don't
get any money for.
We make sure that it gets recycled.
But a lot of things we don't get any money for
at all.
It is a simple case of supply and demand, and
until industry develops the ability to process
and sell the recyclables,
the trash that once piled up at landfills will
pile up here.
Shelley Koffler, Texas News 5.