New York City businesses achieve a waste-reduction goal, and two popular beverage companies make changes to the materials they use for packaging.
A story about rising commodity prices drew our readers’ attention last month. And so did Waste Management’s take on the ups and downs of recycling markets.
Federal authorities slap a Georgia plastics recycling company with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, and officials in New Mexico get their hands dirty in a waste composition study.
Wyoming is renowned for its cowpokes, but the results from a recent aluminum recycling competition show students in the state also excel in another type of roundup.
At last week’s ISRI2016 show, awards were given out to industry leaders at the twilight of their recycling careers as well as those who have yet to enter high school.
A look into glass recycling in Fairfax County, Va. captured interest in December. | Courtesy of Fairfax County.
A mix of stories about exports, collection strategies, recycling rates, paper investments and recyclables pricing drew readers’ attention last month.
News about fiber markets captured our readers’ clicks throughout 2019. | John McLenaghan/Shutterstock
Over the past 12 months, plummeting fiber prices have hamstrung programs and recycling operators across North America. Little surprise then that analysis of that trend grabbed significant attention from our readers.
The impact of the seismic shift in recycling markets over the past two-and-a-half years can be clearly seen in the quarterly recycling revenue numbers of Waste Management, which operates roughly 100 materials recovery facilities in North America.
The publicly traded company has seen its quarterly recycling-related revenue decline 35% (from $375 million to $245 million) since the third quarter of 2017. In July of 2017, China announced its intention to ban many categories of recyclables, and the policy was implemented at the start of 2018.
Values for many key curbside materials have dropped significantly since then.
Information for this month’s Data Corner came from Waste Management’s publicly available earnings reports.
This article originally appeared in the November 2019 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content.
News about California legislation drew clicks in October. | Susanne Pommer/Shutterstock
A mix of stories about sorting infrastructure, brand owner commitments, legislation and markets drew our readers’ attention last month.