The trick is there are two factors at play here: environmentalism and economics. If you could find someone to pay for your trash, would you sell it? Hell yes you would! But what if that means that you had to ship it to China? That's the dynamic at play in Ontario.

Toronto, like many other North American cities, has its own sorting centers for recyclable items, but what about the stuff that too dirty and won't be accepted by Canadian and American mills? It's simply not profitable to process those items enough to turn them into high-grade 'resources.'

In China, where labor is uhh ... really cheap, recyclers can pay for that extra layer of workers to refine the really dirty cans, peanut butter jars, scrap paper etc. They also pay a fair price for North American recyclables, from $30-$40 a tonne.

So, of course, that's where many of Ontario's recyclables (an estimated 4%) go -- to Asia. They're loaded on truck or trains, hauled across the country, loaded onto container ships, and sent across the world. Needless to say, that contributes more to greenhouse emissions than simply burying the trash in a landfill.

When consumers put their beer can in the blue box, they believe that they're fighting the good fight for the planet, but in many cases, they're sadly mistaken. While officials admit, the plan isn't sustainable, they say is a necessary evil until recycling advances are made. The only silver lining is that the plastic that ends up in China or South Korea is generally consumed their to manufacture cheap goods to be sent back across the Pacific.

So, what do you think? Is it worth it?

[via Treehugger]