hang on while we all go down the tubes

The other day I was described as "harsh" by the blogger over at Dead Tree Edition.

But check out his or her (they are anonymous) recent post. I'll let him/her start to tell the story of what I figured would come home to roost sooner or later. But this bit first--for years municipal curbside recycling programs have been increasingly operating single stream (commingled) collection programs and they have not had a problem finding a market for the tangled mix of paper that most North American recycled pulp & paper mills would rather take a pass on. No problem, Asia, specifically China, wants our waste paper. China has been building paper mills like crazy in the last 10 years. This has worked out well...even though this situation is not part of some well-thought-out plan...most recycling programs don't realize this situation (high demand for recovered waste paper in China) was really just chance, luck, serendipity...stumbled upon. There were no egghead economists planning this out...the whole thing has been "hedge-fund" like -- and we all know how that works out WHEN THE RULES CHANGE!

So I'll let Dead Tree tell the story for now.