I know a few local companies who use recycled material, but whether or not that material came from this neighborhood is unkown to me.

I know some of it is used to landscape golf courses.

Other stuff is exported.
some companies make fiber out of it for packaging material .
on and on.

No one I would guess. Vegas is way out in the middle of nowhere. If our recycled goods don't make it to SoCal, ?My guess is that they do not go anwhere.

I assume plastics go to manufacturers of various materials that use recycled plastic, while wood and paper goes to paper companies that use waste paper, and metals are sold to aluminum, steel and other metal producers.

Very sadly, in speaking with a large local aluminum welding shop the owner explained to me that he purchased thousands of pounds of aluminum from China because their price was the best. The kicker is that he went on to explain that China is a large purchaser of recycled pop bottles which they incinerate to generate power for their aluminum smelters. Given recycling habits, most of the plastic they are burning probably comes from North America. I'm sure most of you know that incinerating PET plastics produces many compounds that are dangerous to many organisms on the planet, including you.

signed,

A dedicated and depressed recycler.

Ive heard that paper and plastic recycling is actually a net waste in energy savings. Thier just subsidized by the government. Aluminum is the good one.

Sadly, no one, because my neighborhood has no recycling system.

Paper and plastic reuse is mostly outside of Montana. We have a paper mill in Frenchtown, Montana that makes cardboard, but I don't think they use recycled paper from Montana to do that. Most recycled paper goes to the West coast for recreation as a new product for purchase and use.

The newspaper gets sent to pulp plants.

The rest? Not a clue.

If anyone has the coordinates for a national recycling directory, which lists local recycling centers, it would be swell to post it here.

The materials are sold (or in some cases, payment is required to take them) to commodity brokers who then sell them to refiners who then sell them to raw material users. In the case of paper, it gets sold to recyclers who deink and convert the paper in to pulp. The pulp is then, depending on the grade, sold to paper manufacturers. Plastic and glass work similarly. Paper is more likely to turn up in paper again. Plastic, such as soda bottles, ends up as park benches, Trex(R) decking, EcoSpun(R) artificial wool or other non-food container product. I learned this by visiting the recycling center. I also organized a "Environment day" for our local Leadership group where we investigated such issues.

Once it goes to the collectyor, I have no idea.

1. Ask at the local dump or recycling centre
2. Ask your garbagemen
3. Ask political parties - this kind of thing is there local-election break and butter
4. local green groups

I have no idea. I really don't.