ABC’s Bob Woodruff hosts Planet Green’s Focus Earth, a news program centered on environmental issues. Over the weekend, the show covered an issue that has never crossed our minds, but one that will surely affect advertising, specifically packaged goods.
The report found that America’s recycling companies are negatively affected by the slow-down in consumer packaged goods purchases, homes, cars, sky scrapers and more. With fewer companies demanding the recyclable waste materials (ie. cans, cardboard boxes, dead cars, metal from buildings etc.), supply is up and prices are down.
For example, plastic bags used to be worth a few hundred bucks per ton. Not anymore — today they’re virtually worthless.
And this isn’t good for the environment. With low or no demand for these goods, they risk ending up in a landfill. We aren’t sure what the solution is, short of new industry coming to the recyclers’ rescue and finding new products to make with your old milk cartons.
