Colin Staub is a reporter at Resource Recycling. He can be contacted at [email protected].
India has substantially increased its imports since China banned mixed paper from entering the country. | SNEHIT PHOTO/Shutterstock
India, the largest overseas market for U.S. mixed paper, has tightened quality standards and reduced its recycled fiber import volume.
Verso announced its Duluth, Minn. mill will be producing 90,000 tons of recycled products per year. | DenisNata/Shutterstock
A Minnesota recycled paper mill conversion project has expanded beyond its original planned capacity and may grow further, company officials recently announced. Production is slated to begin this month.
The upcoming Pratt projects will join more than a dozen U.S. mills that have added or will be adding recycled paper capacity since 2017. | noomcpk/Shutterstock
A major end user of mixed paper and OCC will construct two additional North American recycled containerboard mills in the next six years, the company’s owner said in a recent media interview.
A grant initiative announced this week is making $1.5 million available for qualifying municipalities across Michigan. | KyleHohler/Shutterstock
Detroit and other Michigan municipalities will bolster their recycling efforts this year thanks to grant funds from public and private sources.
China published a permit list approving imports of 2.8 million metric tons of recovered fiber, its first permit list for 2020. That’s down from 5 million metric tons during the first permit round a year earlier. | hanohiki/Shutterstock
The latest permit figures from the Chinese government illustrate the country’s goals to continue reducing its recycled fiber intake.
Recovered material outside the new glass processing facility in Fairfax County, Va. | Courtesy of Fairfax County.
A local program in a populous area of northern Virginia is seeing positive results after shifting glass from curbside collection to drop-off. The effort has also set the stage for a hub-and-spoke system to serve the wider region.
This year, through October, just 9.8 million short tons of recovered fiber have been imported into China. | richard pross/Shutterstock
Recent actions by the Chinese government indicate the country will likely ban imports of OCC and almost all other fiber grades in 2021. Such a move would come in the wake of industry-shaking mixed paper and plastic prohibitions already in place.
U.S. recovered fiber exports to China will continue to face a 25% tariff, as they have since September 2018. | Surapol Usanakul/Shutterstock
The Chinese government will not implement a planned tariff increase on OCC and other recovered fiber imported from the U.S., nor scrap aluminum, after the two countries came to an agreement in recent trade talks. But existing tariffs will remain.
A close-up view shows the wide variety of materials in the mixed-plastic bales. | Jared Paben/Resource Recycling, Inc.
A demonstration project found that by routing mixed bales and MRF residue to a central sorting location, more than 17,000 tons of additional plastics could be captured in the Pacific Northwest each year.
KDC and Celadon noted that in North America e-commerce trends are driving higher OCC generation in the residential recycling stream. | ja images/Shutterstock
A technology company and investment firm say they will develop two North American facilities processing more than 800,000 tons per year of mixed paper and OCC into recycled pulp and paper.