Colin Staub is a reporter at Resource Recycling. He can be contacted at [email protected].
U.S. exporters shipped 4.5 million short tons of recovered fiber from July through September. That’s the lowest third-quarter volume since 2006. | MAGNIFIER / Shutterstock
Overseas appetite for scrap plastic dwindled in the third quarter. On the domestic side, operators report stable movement for common curbside materials, although fiber pricing remains a challenge.
Denmark-headquartered Baltic Control was approved as an inspector of U.S. exports to China earlier this year | Bullstar/Shutterstock
China has approved the first non-Chinese-government-affiliated entity to inspect U.S. recovered fiber shipments to the Asia country. The move raises questions about the country’s long-term plans for recovered fiber imports.
Waste watchdog Basel Action Network tracked containers of mixed paper that were shipped from the U.S. to Indonesia and were rejected. | Naruedom Yaempongsa/Shutterstock
Contaminated bales of recycled paper stonewalled at Indonesian ports were not returned to the U.S. as promised, according to environmental organizations.
ABA President and CEO Katherine Lugar presented a major recycling funding initiative alongside leaders from beverage companies. | Photo credit: YouTube
Coca-Cola, Keurig Dr Pepper and PepsiCo today pledged to put their money behind boosting processing technology and increasing curbside collection access. They’ll also introduce a uniform recycling message on their bottles next year.
Packaging Corporation of America will add 350,000 tons per year of OCC pulping capacity at its Wallula, Wash. mill. | Google Earth
Packaging Corporation of America will begin consuming OCC at a mill in the Pacific Northwest, citing customer demand, feedstock availability and cost savings.
OCC has traded for consistently lower prices each month this year. | create jobs 51/Shutterstock
Executives from paper manufacturers that consume major tonnages of OCC and mixed paper recently offered their thoughts on where the recycled-material market is headed.
Jenna Jambeck was the keynote at this year’s Resource Recycling Conference and Trade Show, held in late summer. | Resource Recycling Conference/Brian Adams Photography
The statistic has taken on almost household familiarity: 91% of plastic ever created has not been recycled, and a massive amount has become litter. Jenna Jambeck, a researcher who helped formulate that number, recently spoke about solutions to the pollution problem.
Around 50% of box manufacturer U.S. Corrugated’s total paper sourcing comes from post-consumer materials. | John McLenaghan/Shutterstock
U.S. Corrugated, a box manufacturer that uses recovered fiber, is opening a “super plant” in Indiana in coming months, with more new capacity coming in the future.
UBQ currently operates in Israel but is eyeing Virginia as a possible location for a large-scale facility. | Courtesy of UBQ Materials
A nascent company that makes a composite material from the non-recycled waste stream is looking to site a processing plant in the U.S.
The city of Boise rolled out the EnergyBag program in 2018. | Aleksandr Grechanyuk/Shutterstock
The Hefty EnergyBag program is collecting but not currently processing hard-to-recycle plastics in Boise, Idaho. The program’s downstream processor suspended EnergyBag processing earlier this year to install new equipment.