For Sonoco Recycling, which collects, sorts, and sells recycled materials, China’s imports restrictions have particularly stung in one area: mixed-paper bales.
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For Sonoco Recycling, which collects, sorts, and sells recycled materials, China’s imports restrictions have particularly stung in one area: mixed-paper bales.
When it made landfall on Aug. 25, Hurricane Harvey became the wettest tropical cyclone to ever hit the U.S., dumping more than five feet of water on Houston. The resulting floods have impacted the recycling industry in multiple ways, driving up prices for virgin plastics, hampering freight systems and halting curbside collections.
A Canadian recycling company has been fined for violating a fair wage policy in Toronto and must pay back wages to hundreds of employees.
A local program practicing source separation describes its low-contamination advantage in light of Chinese import restrictions, and Orlando, Fla. is chosen as the site of a diversion-driving pilot project.
In this section in July, we featured a MRF that hangs over the waters of New York Harbor: Sims Municipal Recycling’s Sunset Park facility in Brooklyn, N.Y.
One report indicates that buyers in China are desperately seeking domestic sources of recovered paper. Meanwhile, low-value plastics are flooding the European market, but processors there have limited ability to handle those loads.
DJ VanDeusen of WestRock speaks at the Resource Recycling Conference.
Some of the key recovered commodities generated by materials recovery facilities have been fetching high prices lately, including aluminum and fibers. But China’s import restrictions have introduced an element of the unknown in the market.
California lawmakers have sent the governor a bill mandating that carpet stewards achieve a 24 percent recycling rate and discouraging the use of incineration. Meanwhile, carpet makers are sticking with their beleaguered stewardship group, instead of submitting alternative collection and recycling plans.
Real Alloy is restarting an idled aluminum recycling plant in Kentucky because of increased customer demand and a new contract.
Pennsylvania’s recycling stakeholders lobby to protect tens of millions of dollars in recycling money from being diverted, and a New Jersey company is fined after the death of an employee.