After years of reports that recycling was a bust, 2021 is shaping up to be a boom year for a business that is, by nature, cyclical.
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A front-end loader moves cardboard to a baling machine at Waste Management’s Madison Recycling Center. Recycled cardboard sold for a record $185 a ton in October, according to recyclingmarkets.net. "There’s been more demand for boxes as we become an e-commerce society," said Jennifer Semrau, the state's recycling coordinator.
Prices for #2 plastic used in milk jugs topped $2,000 a ton in October, hitting a record high and surpassing aluminum cans, according to the market research firm recyclingmarkets.net.
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Plastic bins collected for recycling await processing at Waste Management’s Madison Recycling Center, which specializes in high-grade commercial materials that can't be easily separated from curbside recycling.
Larry Semrite of Waste Management’s Madison Recycling Center makes his way past a mound of paper products. In early 2020, recyclers had trouble giving away mixed paper; last month it was selling for more than $100 a ton thanks to demand for tissue paper and cardboard boxes.
Bales of plastic containers are stored at Pellitteri Waste Systems in Madison.
Semrau
Art of the everyday: See the world through the eyes of the Wisconsin State Journal's photographers
CHALK IT UP
Alissa Krueger and daughter Nora, 2, create chalk drawings on the sidewalk in front of their Madison house Friday. The artwork might be short-lived, with a chance of showers or thunderstorms through the weekend and into Monday before sunshine returns on Tuesday.
FALL CYCLE
Cycling friends David Ghilardi, left, Keith Kosbau, center, and Mike Hart take in the changing autumn scenery during an afternoon ride Monday through the UW Arboretum in Madison. This week will feel a little more like autumn than the summery temperatures in the 80s seen last week, with highs in the low 70s predicted for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
MAKING WAVES
Gabrielle Javier-Cerulli, a community artist with the Madison Public Library’s The Bubbler project and Dane Arts Mural Arts, adds tiles to a mosaic project outside the Dane County Juvenile Shelter Home on the East Side. Using tiles hand-colored by students at the home, the project is a collaboration among the artist, students and staff, and features a "waves" theme designed by the students to illustrate the ripple effect people can have on each other.
Schuster's Farm
Walter Weber makes liberal use of Schuster's Farm's dried corn kernel pit, one of several attractions at the farm that's a longtime Halloween season destination for Dane County families.
DOWN ON THE FARM
Kylie Steiner helps her son Atlas navigate the Schuster's Farm pumpkin patch in Deerfield on Wednesday.
TALKING SPIRITS
A group of students on a Thursday field trip from DeForest High School watch as local actress Victoria Mecozzi, holding a Blue Star Service Banner, portrays Jessie Smith during the Wisconsin Veterans Museum's Talking Spirits Cemetery Tours: Wisconsin Women at War at Forest Hill Cemetery. Smith, who died in 1953 at age 72, lost her son, Lt. Robert Standish Smith, in February 1944 when his air ambulance crashed into a hillside while he was transporting wounded soldiers from Italy to North Africa in World War II. Four crew members, three nurses and 18 wounded men died in the crash. Standish Smith was buried in Sicily, but his remains were returned home two years after the war and reburied at Forest Hill Cemetery. The sold-out tours continue Saturday and Sunday, and an online tour will be available in the coming weeks.
PUMKIN REGATTA PICKIN'S
Graduate and post-doctoral students in the Department of Horticulture lab of UW-Madison professor Irwin Goldman carry one of a dozen large pumpkins grown by the students to a trailer in Merton on Thursday. Each weighing more than 100 pounds, the gourds will be used in Saturday’s Giant Pumpkin Regatta on Lake Mendota. The event, co-hosted by the department and the Hoofers Sailing Club, features students racing each other in the hollowed-out shells of the pumpkins. Assisting in the effort are Shakirah Nakasagga, a post-doctoral student; Chandler Meyer, a graduate student; and Emilee Gaulke, a graduate student whose family owns the farm. The pumpkins were started from seed in a UW greenhouse in March and transferred to the field in May.
BIRTHDAY ON BASCOM HILL
UW-Madison math student Josiah Locke studies outdoors during a Tuesday afternoon visit to Bascom Hill, the same day that the University of Wisconsin System celebrated its 50th anniversary. On Oct. 12, 1971, legislation signed by Gov. Patrick Lucey took effect, merging Wisconsin’s two systems of public four-year higher education under a single Board of Regents.
GOODMAN POOL RESURFACE
Workers from Badger Swimpools add plaster to the surface of Goodman Pool as an off-season restoration of the facility continued Tuesday in Madison.
GIRLS ON THE RUN
Runners — from left, Adele Zolik, Lily Stumm and Alma Lusson — do laps around Yahara Place Park during a Girls on the Run practice Wednesday. The group meets twice a week and is open to girls in third through fifth grade.
SETTING SAIL
Enjoying mild autumn temperatures and sunny skies, members of the Wisconsin Sailing Team prepare their crafts for a practice session Thursday prior to heading out onto Lake Mendota. Half of the club’s 60 members will be competing in various university-level regattas throughout the country this weekend.
CHRISTMAS ALREADY?
Horticulturist Larry Holterman installs lights in a tree Monday at the entrance of the Rotary Botanical Gardens in Janesville in preparation for the Gardens' holiday light show beginning the day after Thanksgiving and featuring more than 1 million lights. Holterman said he starts putting lights up in mid-August and was expecting to spend about five hours installing lights in the tree he was decorating Monday. He'll again have good weather for tree-climbing today, with sunny skies and a high in the low 70s.
FREE AS A BIRD
Adapting a hula skirt acquired for this year’s Halloween activities for her own preferences, Kansas Polkinghorn, 5, of Madison, explores the grounds of Harvey E. Schmidt Park with a pair of sandhill cranes during a Monday visit with family.
TAKING FLIGHT
Second-grader Clive Hebl throws a paper airplane on his walk home from school with his mom, Melanie Hebl, not pictured, Wednesday as warm fall temperatures linger before frost moves in early Friday and Saturday.
EIGHT IS ENOUGH
Jennifer Mallon guides eight dogs along a walkway adjacent to Warner Park during a Wednesday outing with the pets of clients of the Ruff Trails canine hiking and training enterprise. Along for the outing are, from left, Baxter, Rishi, Tonks (background), Toby, Greta, Bo, Coconut and Penny.
EXPLORING SPACE
UW-Madison students enrolled in a foundations art course in 3D design assemble constructions of wood and metal outside the Humanities Building on Wednesday. The freeform creations allowed the students to explore concepts such as line, volume and space.
PADDLIN' IN THE RAIN
Canoers start a trip along Wingra Creek at Olin Park on a rainy Thursday afternoon. Friday and Saturday will be better days for paddling as sunshine returns before rain moves in Sunday for what looks to be a wet week.
AUTUMN ARRAY
The changing colors of a maple tree at the UW Arboretum frame Nola Dupuis, left, and Carol Kiemel as they share a walk Friday. A frosty fall morning will give way to sunshine Saturday with high temperatures reaching back into the 50s through the weekend and into next week and a chance of showers returning Sunday.
EIGHT-WHEELIN'
Brittany Plass, of Madison, practices her roller-skating skills Monday at Winnequah Skate Park in Monona. Plass recently reacquainted herself with the throwback mode of transport and should have good weather today to sharpen her skills even further. It will be in the mid-50s with mostly sunny skies.
NO ICE, NO PROBLEM
Stephen Balsley, of Madison, goes for one of his regular 1-mile swims in Lake Wingra on Tuesday. Balsley said he will continue to swim in the lake until it freezes over.
FLAMINGOS FILL THE HILL
Mei Li Brown of the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association prepares a plastic pink flamingo for placement on Bascom Hill while helping with the foundation’s Fill the Hill fundraising event on the UW-Madison campus in 2021.
