[13of40]

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.

[chrischen]

> like not dumping it in the woods if it can't be sold.

I'd imagine that's not as big of a problem as it may sound since the criminals wouldn't want to lose money like that.

That being said if the criminals are getting to the recycling first they're technically providing better (faster) service.

[13of40]

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.

[chrischen]

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.

[danans]

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.

[arrosenberg]

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.