Resource Recycling keeps you on top of critical industry trends and brings unparalleled analysis of the evolving materials stream, market turbulence, policy trends and more.
Shipping giant Maersk announced as of Sept. 1, 2020 it will no longer take scrap material shipments to China. | Mariusz Bugno/Shutterstock
Citing China’s upcoming legislation that will ban all “solid waste” imports, APM-Maersk this month announced it will stop shipping virtually all recovered materials to China and Hong Kong in the coming weeks.
The Coastal Resources of Maine (CRM) facility in Hampden, Maine launched last year to handle mixed waste from numerous municipalities. | Screen shot from company video
Higher-than-expected costs, recycling market turbulence and other factors led to the recent shutdown of a Maine mixed-waste processing plant. Stakeholders are hoping a new operator can restart the plant, which had run for just one year.
Recent research determined that in 2019, UBCs made up 12.5% of potential revenues in MRFs in bottle bill states and 33% of potential revenues in MRFs in non-bottle-bill states. | Graham Corney/Shutterstock
Robotics and additional eddy current separators are key to maximizing sortation of used beverage cans, according to MRF operators, researchers and other experts.
Starting in 2023, “packaging-like” and “single-use” products will be added to British Columbia’s producer-managed recycling program. | Tudoran Andrei/Shutterstock
Canada’s third-largest province has approved a number of changes to its extended producer responsibility and container deposit programs. Continue Reading
Paper is one of eight categories within the U.S. EPA’s federal procurement guidelines | Aleksei Lazukov/Shutterstock
The U.S. EPA asked for public feedback on a list of recycled-content products purchased by federal agencies. The request drew 114 responses from a range of recycling stakeholders. Continue Reading
Ring Container Technologies began exploring and developing a PET canister to replace traditional composite can formats early in 2017. The first SmartCANs were shipped in June 2018. | Courtesy of Ring Container Technologies.
Ring Container Technologies wanted to understand the curbside recyclability of an all-PET container versus its existing polycoated paperboard canister. So it asked recycling programs themselves.
A leader with Waste Connections said that his company has seen increased collection volumes during the COVID-19 pandemic. | Resource Recycling file photo.
Two large publicly held waste and recycling companies are taking in higher residential volumes during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they say contamination has been flat. Recently, they’ve also started seeing critical upticks on the commercial side.
From January through May 2020, China imported 1.9 million short tons of recovered fiber from the U.S.. | Avigator Fortuner/Shutterstock
The Chinese government continues to indicate it will eliminate “solid waste” imports, restating the plan during a recent press conference. At the same time, the country has approved additional shipments of recovered paper.
The price of recovered corrugated fiber has taken another significant dive this month, but mixed paper is holding relatively steady.
According to The Recycling Partnership, single-family households in the U.S. may be generating as much as 1.6 billion pounds of recyclable PP scrap each year. | Sodel Vladyslav/Shutterstock
An initiative from The Recycling Partnership will provide millions of dollars in capital to help sorting facilities install equipment for PP recovery.