第2928期:Is waste recycling profitable?

New York city's eight million residents are known for staying busy, but with the abundance of people comes plenty of waste and the need to recycle.

纽约市八百万居民以忙碌著称，但人口众多也带来了大量垃圾和回收需求。

Compliance is a big challenge, and in a city as diverse as New York, it's always been a challenge.

合规是个很大的挑战，在纽约这样多元化的城市里，这一直都是个难题。

New York city produces a 12,000 tons of waste each day, but manages to recycle just 17% of it.

纽约市每天产生12000吨废物，但却只能回收其中的17%。

There's no city in the United States that is winning with recycling right now.

目前，美国没有一座城市在回收利用方面做得很成功。

It turns out that it's become a money loser for municipalities around the country, and in the past they'd actually been shipping it abroad to be dumped.

结果全国各地的市政当局都在往里砸钱，而过去他们实际上一直将其运往国外倾倒。

In the past companies that recycle plastic, paper, glass and metal would pay municipalities for their trash.

以前，回收塑料、纸张、玻璃和金属的公司会向市政当局支付垃圾处理费用。

More recently the cities started paying the companies to pick up their material,

最近，城市开始向这些公司付费，让他们回收材料，

sometimes hauling the trash far away before dumping it, worsening its environmental footprint.

有时这些公司会把垃圾运到很远的地方再倾倒，这进一步加重了对环境的影响。

Now both municipalities and business owners have started to adapt.

现在，市政当局和企业主都开始适应。

This new facility one hour south of New York city hopes to divert more trash through its doors.

这座位于纽约市以南一小时车程的新设施希望能回收更多垃圾。

When things get handled many times and there's a lot of waste in the stream, it becomes more costly for the community to recycle.

当垃圾被多次处理且流程中存在大量浪费时，社区回收的成本就会变得更高。

The building with state-of-the-art optical sorters, screening and sizing means less wasted labor and material.

配备先进光学分选机、筛分和尺寸分级系统的建筑减少了劳动力和材料的浪费。

We project a savings to the taxpayers and municipalities of Monmouth County of over 2 million dollars in our first year.

我们预计第一年为孟莫斯县的纳税人和市政当局节省200多万美元，

But municipal solid waste accounts for no more than 3% of the nation's waste stream.

但城市生活垃圾在全国垃圾总量中的占比不超过3%。

Experts say making headway in recycling more agricultural, industrial and electronic waste could require more investment from the companies that manufacture the products.

专家表示，要在农业、工业及电子废弃物回收领域取得进展，可能需要产品制造商加大投资力度。

If corporate powers were willing to take responsibility for the end result of the materials that they put into the marketplace,

如果企业权力机构愿意为其投放市场的产品原料的最终结果负责，

so that their relationship to the market and to us as consumers would be more of a circular model instead of a linear model. That would be a really big step.

这样他们与市场和消费者之间的关系将更趋向于循环模式而非线性模式。那将是非常重要的一步。

If we aren't focusing on leaving the world either equal to when we started or better, then we are not doing a service to our children and future generations.

如果我们不注意让世界变得和我们开始时一样或者更好，那么我们就是在辜负子孙后代。

Local governments are still adjusting to the loss of China as the country's preferred recycler.

地方政府仍在适应失去中国这一首选回收国的局面。

But experts say they expect a renaissance of recycling in the coming years, with new policies and technological advances that turn more trash into a useful resource. 

但专家表示，他们预计未来几年回收利用将迎来复兴，新政策和技术进步会将更多垃圾转化为有用资源。