The Trash Crash
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 11 April 2019
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Here’s something you may not know. You (listener) are a member of the global trash trade. Every time you recycle a Coke bottle or throw a banana peel away, you’re entering a market of buyers, sellers, and fierce competition. Today on the show, why the market for your trash crashed and how American recyclers are course correcting.
Guest: Meleesa Johnson, president of the Associated Recyclers of Wisconsin and Marathon County’s director of solid waste disposal.
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Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Jayson De Leon, and Anna Martin
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It must be just torture for you to be in public spaces. |
| 0:07.5 | I mean, when you're in an airport and you're sitting next to a recycling bin, |
| 0:10.4 | drives me crazy. |
| 0:15.2 | This is Melissa Johnson. |
| 0:17.1 | I always describe our solid waste recycling waste reduction family as an incestuous group of individuals passionate about garbage. |
| 0:27.7 | Melissa spends a lot of time thinking about recycling and garbage. |
| 0:31.8 | It's her job. |
| 0:33.1 | It's her life. |
| 0:34.1 | She's the president of the Associated Recyclers of Wisconsin. |
| 0:37.1 | She's the director of solid waste disposal incyclers of Wisconsin. She's the director of solid |
| 0:38.1 | waste disposal in Marathon County, 100 miles north of Madison. Her email sign-off is in Latin. |
| 0:44.0 | Namitipsa, Sientia potest. Knowledge is power, especially when you share it with random people |
| 0:50.5 | at the airport. You can ask my granddaughter about the conversations I have with strangers about recycling |
| 0:56.2 | rights. |
| 0:57.7 | She's like, no, grandma, not again. |
| 1:01.0 | Yeah, not again. |
| 1:02.5 | Well, here we go again. |
| 1:06.4 | How did you come to be someone who, as you say, loved garbage? |
| 1:11.7 | Well, that's a good story. |
| 1:13.9 | I actually, I was waiting for... |
| 1:16.1 | At the Atlanta airport, Melissa got to talking to two women from Beirut about what she does for a living. |
| 1:21.7 | When it was my turn, I mentioned that my job is to manage waste material. |
... |
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