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The price of oil and natural gas markets affects all plastic manufacturers. Recycled plastics compete for a share of the market with plastics made from virgin oil and natural gas. Manufacturers can either choose to make their products out of post -consumer recycled plastics or from virgin material. If the price of oil or natural gas is high then manufactures will move to more recycled content. But as the price of oil and natural gas continued to be low in 2015 more and more manufacturers are using virgin oil and there was an oversupply of plastics for recycling on the market. This in turn causes the price that manufacturers are willing to pay for recycled plastic to drop as well. Why does it matter? Without immediate planning and action, some of Minnesota's recycled glass will end up in landfills or dropped from programs all together, and without a long-term solution that requires responsibility and some investment from producers, like bottle deposit legislation, glass may cease to be recycled at all. Glass collected for recycling that needlessly ends up in a landfill will end up costing the cities and their residents more money while reducing their recycling programs' environmental benefits. There are significant, undisputable environmental and economic benefits achieved from recycling glass. These include energy savings, reduction of air and water pollution, and a reduced need to none new resources. Furthermore, State, municipal and environmental advocates agree that environmental benefits reduce dramatically the further we shay from the highest and best use of recycled glass, so - glass bottles recycled into glass bottles should be the primary goal and then the next best markets for the smaller glass and fines need to be developed. These environmental impacts are the reason Eureka Recycling has been committed to finding a solution to keep bottle - to -bottle recycling viable despite changes in collection methods. • Glass bottles and jars are 100% recyclable and can be recycled endlessly without any loss in purity or quality. • Over a ton of natural resources are saved for every ton of glass recycled. • Energy costs drop about 2-3% for every 10% cullet used in the manufacturing process. • One ton of carbon dioxide is reduced for every six tons of recycled container glass used in the manufacturing process. ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS The environmental benefits of Roseville's zero -waste recycling program are quantified transparently using widely -accepted environmental models. This ensures that all residents have a chance to see how their efforts can be measured and quantified. There are many ways to calculate the benefits of recycling. To better explain these benefits in commonly understood terms, government agencies, research scientists, and economists have created several "calculators" to translate the amounts of recycled materials collected, and processed into equivalent positive societal and environmental benefits. 9