Is it theft if the people and companies throwing it out don't care? I would assume it's not the cities or garbage company's property until it's actually picked up?
>I would assume it's not the cities or garbage company's property until it's actually picked up?
Depends on where the cardboard was dumped. If it's on the curb somewhere, on public property, there's a stronger case that the property as abandoned[1]. However, if it's a dumpster located on private property, an argument can be made that the residents/businesses disposing of the garbage is immediately transferring ownership to the city. eg. consider the scenario where a factory dumps its metal scraps in a dumpster so it can be picked up by a recycler (who will pay the factory for the scraps). You also see something similar for restaurants where they have a dedicated storage container for oil, which a dedicated company picks up and pays them for it. In those cases it's clear that the "garbage" isn't being abandoned, and still belongs to either the original owner, or the company designated to pick it up.
[1] Although even that's tricky, eg. the process for clothing donations involves leaving your clothes on the curb for pick up. Are articles of clothing left like that fair game for anyone else to snatch first? I don't think so, given that the intent is for it to be picked up by the designated entity, not merely just abandoned.
While I think you're right (in terms of laws around abandoned property) it's worth noting that the gangs discussed in the article only steal cardboard in large quantities. At $80/ton, even a pound of cardboard is just 3 cents.
Now, in poorer countries, people absolutely do collect individual pieces of scrap cardboard, even at those incredibly low prices. But that's more related to a much, much sadder discussion about income inequality. If you want to see what that looks like, living on scraps from the streets, Reuters recently did an interesting photo piece: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-homeless-widerimag...
Then put a lock on the trash bin and give a key/access code to the recycler. Problem solved.
In my country we have poor people making a living on recyclables. They usually carry carboad by push carts. I would have a problem if these vulnerable people got prosecuted for cardboard "theft".
On the one hand, it doesn't seem right for the government to use this as a moneymaking opportunity at the expense of other "entrepreneurs" but on the other hand the official pipeline probably adheres to some standards they wouldn't, like not dumping it in the woods if it can't be sold.
Like any other industry, I assume the value of these things ebbs and flows. If you look at recycling in the US when China decided not to accept our waste, I bet a lot of companies found themselves stuck with tons of material that suddenly had negative value. It's easier to imagine a government agency doing the right thing in that situation than a criminal enterprise.
That's an isolated incident. I don't think the cardboard they've been collecting all this time regularly will have day to day shifts in values that cause them to randomly discard some in the forest.
A lot of cardboard has no recycling value because it is contaminated with other materials.
For example, used pizza boxes soaked with grease are not recyclable. If you're lucky and your city has a municipal composting program, they can be composted, or some places incinerate stuff like this for energy, but otherwise they end up in the trash, or worse, discarded in the forest.
That doesn't stop people from throwing them in the recycling bin though.
The government doing it means that a previous generation of entrepreneurs or citizens had a problem with recycling that wasn't being solved adequately by private markets, so they petitioned the government to organize it.
The alternative is privatizing the profits and socializing the costs, which is way worse.
I would assume that as well. In some jurisdictions in the US there is a precedent that when you take your trash out to the curb it is no longer private property, so the cops (and anyone else) can take it and search through it for goodies. I would expect the same rules to apply to recycling bins as well.
Depends on where the cardboard was dumped. If it's on the curb somewhere, on public property, there's a stronger case that the property as abandoned[1]. However, if it's a dumpster located on private property, an argument can be made that the residents/businesses disposing of the garbage is immediately transferring ownership to the city. eg. consider the scenario where a factory dumps its metal scraps in a dumpster so it can be picked up by a recycler (who will pay the factory for the scraps). You also see something similar for restaurants where they have a dedicated storage container for oil, which a dedicated company picks up and pays them for it. In those cases it's clear that the "garbage" isn't being abandoned, and still belongs to either the original owner, or the company designated to pick it up.
[1] Although even that's tricky, eg. the process for clothing donations involves leaving your clothes on the curb for pick up. Are articles of clothing left like that fair game for anyone else to snatch first? I don't think so, given that the intent is for it to be picked up by the designated entity, not merely just abandoned.