#1: Boom Times For The Recycling Industry

From: KQED
Series: QUEST: Recycling in America
Length: 04:54

Here's one silver lining to a slow economy: High recycling rates. Americans are wasting far less, and recycling far more. Nowhere is the trend as strong as in California. As Amy Standen reports, this change is sending ripple effects throughout the international economy. Read the full description.

Piece Audio

Playing: #1: Boom Times For The Recycling Industry
From: KQED

Standen_recycling_small Here's one silver lining to a slow economy: High recycling rates. Americans are wasting far less, and recycling far more. Nowhere is the trend as strong as in California. As Amy Standen reports, this change is sending ripple effects throughout the international economy.

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Piece Description

Broadcast History

Aired locally on KQED Radio on July 10, 2011

Transcript

Monet Coleman, I think it’s fair to say, is not your average dyed-in-the-wool, tree-hugging environmentalist.

COLEMAN Actually, I never thought to really recycle. Ever.

But a couple months ago, she ran out of gas money and was late to her classes at nursing school. She wasn’t finding part time work. And that’s when she started getting a lot more enthusiastic about garbage.

COLEMAN: Go to a picnic. If you go to five relatives’ house, you could come with two bags full of cans!

Take them here, to Alliance Recycling in Emeryville, and you come out with real money. A few weeks ago, Coleman made eighty dollars.

COLEMAN: Recycling is making the way for me now. I guess it’s my job.

That’s true of a lot more people than it used to be, says Jay Anast, who owns Alliance Recycling. A few years ago, a lot of the people who came in here were pushing shopping carts. Now, he’s seeing late model To...
Read the full transcript

Intro and Outro

INTRO:

INTRO AS AIRED ON KQED-SAN FRANCISCO: Even as the national economy begins to recover, employment still lags here in California. At 11.7 percent, the state’s unemployment rate is the second highest in the country, (after Nevada).

But from an environmental standpoint… at least… there IS a silver lining: We are wasting far less. And recycling far more. As Amy Standen reports, this change is having a ripple effect throughout the economy.

OUTRO:

Meet the urban miners who make a living on cans and bottles on our website… KQED dot org slash quest.