From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for April 22, 1974:

Although many people in 1974 were talking about the need to preserve national resources, there was very little profit in the recycling business, according to an article today. Recycling was an expensive and inefficient alternative to processing virgin materials, making it an unattractive choice for industries wanting to turn a profit. Officials of Lawrence’s recycling project Whomper Inc. said there was no market at all for recycled glass, and only a marginal demand for cans. The only active market was for recycled paper, a material the Whomper had never processed, although its officials were considering an expansion in that direction. The Whomper had stopped accepting glass the previous year and was still trying to get rid of the warehouse full of crushed glass that it still had on hand. The only market, Owens of Illinois, would accept glass only when its trucks happened to be in the Midwest and could stop in Lawrence for a load of glass to take on their return journey, and even then, the Whomper had to pay shipping. Whomper board chair Arly Allen explained that there were very few things glass could be recycled into, except more glass, and the raw materials for making glass were much cheaper than the recycling process. The Whomper had only two markets for aluminum or steel cans, and recycling those materials was also a costly process. Ross McKinney, professor of civil engineering at Kansas University, explained that most major corporations were still only set up to handle virgin materials and that it would probably be another 10 to 15 years before there was a solid market for recycling.