Over the last year, China has closed its doors to virtually all recovered plastic imports, leading to turmoil for exporters and others. But are recycling connections between North America and China ending, or simply evolving?
The Washington state capitol building in Olympia.
Lawmakers in Indiana and Washington are evaluating proposals that would shift end-of-life packaging management responsibilities from municipalities to product producers.
A plastics manufacturer falsely claimed recycled-content products were made from virgin resin as part of a wider scheme to defraud customers and investors, federal regulators said this week.
Recycled film consumer Trex saw its net income climb by more than 40 percent last year, boosted by ample availability of scrap PE.
U.S. trade figures for November 2018 were released last week, and they indicate significant year-over-year declines in tonnages of plastics shipped out of the country.
Recycling stakeholders are pushing back against a container deposit expansion proposal in New York state, saying it will injure recycling programs when they’re already struggling with a down market.
Most material that’s collected in the U.S. for recycling is reclaimed in the U.S., though there is a supply/demand imbalance for some commodities.
This imbalance has traditionally been remedied through demand from the export market, but the amount of material going to export has trended downwards since 2009 and will likely continue to decrease going forward, especially in light of recent policies in China reducing imports.
We have seen a growth in domestic reclamation capacity, but we need more demand and processing capabilities for materials such as film and non-bottle rigid plastics.
This article originally appeared in the May 2017 issue of Plastics Recycling Update. Subscribe today for access to all print content.
Data Sort is produced each quarter by More Recycling. For additional info, go to morerecycling.com
The North American plastics recycling industry is facing uncertainties in terms of the future of export markets as China and other importers evolve policies.
Some plastics sectors feel the effects of these developments more than others. According to the most recent research, roughly 28 percent of recycled plastic collected in the U.S. heads to export markets.
The graph below shows how four key plastic types fit into the export total. Film and non-bottle rigids rely the most on foreign buyers – so these are the materials most likely to be significantly impacted by export undulations.
This article originally appeared in the August 2017 issue of Plastics Recycling Update. Subscribe today for access to all print content.
Data Sort is produced each quarter by More Recycling. For additional info, go to morerecycling.com
According to the most recent statistics, around 900 million pounds of polyethylene post-consumer resin (PCR) are purchased annually in the U.S. for use in new products, but 2.76 billion pounds of PE are collected for recycling.
That means collection is exceeding domestic demand by 1.86 billion pounds. However, information from buyers indicates they could use more if the PCR hits price and specification requirements – these buyers have a potential annual capacity of 2.10 billion pounds, or 76 percent of what is currently collected.
Even with the narrowing of that delta due to yield loss in the reclamation process, demand for recycled content will need to continue to increase to match collection totals.
This article originally appeared in the November 2017 issue of Plastics Recycling Update. Subscribe today for access to all print content.
Data Sort is produced each quarter by More Recycling. For additional info, go to morerecycling.com
The largest environmental benefit from plastics recycling comes when post-consumer resin (PCR) is incorporated into a new product, displacing virgin resin that would otherwise be used. To bring that somewhat abstract concept into real-world terms, we analyzed the effects of increasing PCR in one specific everyday item: plastic trash bags.
In the U.S. trash bag market, approximately 6 billion pounds of PE resin is used annually. The table below shows the details on what would happen if different levels of PCR usage were achieved in the production of these products. Note that 10 percent PCR is currently required in trash bags sold in California and one company, Revolution Bag, currently has a product line featuring 97 percent PCR.
Numbers were tabulated by More Recycling using information from several private reports as well as the U.S. EPA’s WARM calculator and extrapolation of California’s most recent waste characterization study.
Data Sort is produced each quarter by More Recycling. For additional information, go to morerecycling.com.
This article originally appeared in the February 2018 issue of Plastics Recycling Update. Subscribe today for access to all print content.