One Victim of Falling Oil Prices? Recycling

Marketplace

Dropping oil prices are usually good news for most consumers, but the price of oil is so low now, it's actually cheaper to make new plastic bottles than recycle old ones.

That drop not only means landfills have a few extra tons of plastic bottles on their heaps, but businesses that sell recycled plastic are also feeling the crunch. In the last quarter alone, Waste Management, the largest waste hauler in the U.S., lost $59 million because of lower recycling revenues.

"Frankly, that's been happening to us now for the last three years," Waste Management CEO David Steiner says.

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