Credit: Riverview Photography
A viable end market is crucial to effective materials recovery, and in the plastics realm, those downstream uses are growing increasingly diverse.
Colin Staub was a reporter and associate editor at Resource Recycling until August 2025.Credit: Riverview Photography
A viable end market is crucial to effective materials recovery, and in the plastics realm, those downstream uses are growing increasingly diverse.
RES Polyflow’s Michael Dungan says fluctuating oil prices and developments in Asia will continue to affect pyrolysis companies, but he thinks a bigger issue may be a regulatory landscape that he believes is dated and detrimental to technology adoption.
A bale of plastics No. 3-7. Source: Association of Plastic Recyclers.
The idling of a Baltimore-area plastic recovery facility is the kind of challenge that’s expected in an innovative project showcasing a still-developing business model, according to a financial backer.
A joint-venture plastics recovery facility in Maryland will suspend operations in the coming days, citing challenges in the post-consumer plastics industry and pointing to a need to upgrade its equipment.
Operators of materials recovery facilities are increasing their labor forces and installing additional sorting equipment in response to Chinese restrictions on scrap imports. As companies increase sortation efforts to create a higher-quality output, attention is also turning to the domestic plastics processing market.
A Netherlands-based plastics recycling company has been acquired by two large European companies involved in virgin plastic production and waste hauling.
Two midsize jurisdictions are joining a program that collects plastics not currently accepted for recycling and sends them to energy recovery facilities. However, an environmental group is speaking out against the development.
Delegates from the Chinese plastics recycling sector will travel to the U.S. next month with an eye toward planning for the industry’s future.
Market disruption from Chinese import restrictions has led Chinese companies to examine investments in the U.S. recycling industry – but that’s not without precedent. An Ohio processor recently expanded on a similar partnership it entered after the last major Chinese imports crackdown.
Wheels are in motion to resume operations at an idled plastics recycling facility outside Baltimore. But if it does start up again, it will do so without one of its original partners.