Officials in Beijing are set to enact new requirements around the purity of recycled pellets imported into China.
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Officials in Beijing are set to enact new requirements around the purity of recycled pellets imported into China.
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Export figures continue to show the power of recycled plastic import restrictions in Southeast Asia. Countries that were previously the largest overseas markets have seen massive decreases in U.S. plastic imports since mid-2018.
Asia remains the destination for many plastics recovered from electronics. But as buyers relocate from China to other countries, prices are down and quality and volume are increasingly critical factors.
A recently released study estimates the U.S. recycling industry will have a nearly $110 billion economic impact this year. That’s about 6% lower than the number from two years ago.
The escalating trade war between the U.S. and China is creating uncertainty among small businesses and exacerbating a global manufacturing slowdown, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Canada recycled less plastic in 2017 than it did the year before, with decreases in recovery of films, non-bottle rigids and bottles, according to an annual industry report.
The U.S. has become a focus of investment for a small yet growing portion of the Chinese scrap processing industry. Backers of two in-development operations note they are looking for regulatory stability and a strong supply of recyclables.
Recovered plastic has largely stopped flowing from the U.S. into India, which until recently has been among the top importers of the material.
More Southeast Asian nations are sending contaminated recyclables back to their originating country, as governments in the region continue to grapple with higher scrap plastic and paper import volumes.
Federal regulators are asking countries that are major buyers of U.S. recyclables to refrain from implementing new trade restrictions laid out in the Basel Convention, a treaty covering global scrap material shipments.