The cost of insurance is on the rise for those in the business of materials recovery. | Billion Photos/Shutterstock
Recycling professionals are well aware that prices for many commodities are low and contamination rates are high. But due to the rising number of fires in recent years, materials recovery facility (MRF) operators are now encountering struggles around another area of their businesses: insurance.
Even as the vast majority of municipalities have not made changes to recycling service, the coronavirus impact has been felt in programs around the country. | VO IMAGES/Shutterstock
The global escalation of COVID-19 is hampering some North American recycling programs, impacting Chinese users of U.S. recovered fiber, constraining global shipping, denting stock prices and threatening an economic recession.
Boise’s EnergyBag program has explored a number of alternative processing options while awaiting Renewlogy’s upgrades. | Sean Pavone/Shutterstock
A program collecting hard-to-recycle plastics in Idaho’s largest city has been without a solid market for about a year since downstream outlet Renewlogy stopped accepting loads. After an equipment supply delay due to the coronavirus, the city now says this will continue at least through the summer.
CalRecycle is set to award nearly $16 million to six composting and anaerobic digestion projects. | Jan Vaclav Herodes/Shutterstock
Garden State lawmakers passed a food-waste reduction bill, an industry group released tips on starting waste reduction programs, and California is set to award millions for composting and anaerobic digestion projects. Continue Reading
With newly announced process, Chinese importers can apply for tariff exemptions beginning this week. | Sumrit Tesrumphun/Shutterstock
The Chinese government will consider exempting tariffs on OCC and other recovered fiber on a company-by-company basis. Meanwhile, a tariff on U.S. recycled paper pulp shipments into China has been lifted for one year.
Ontario marketed nearly 82,000 metric tons of curbside glass in 2017, sending most of it to NexCycle, a division of Strategic Materials. | Josep Curto/Shutterstock
A market analysis found a number of downstream options for Ontario’s curbside glass, but material quality and cost challenges pose roadblocks to using many of them.
The Total Fiber Recovery project joins a number of other domestic recycled fiber processing capacity expansions that have been announced or come on-line since China began restricting imports. | Siwakorn1933/Shutterstock
A plant taking in mixed paper and OCC is on the way in Virginia, the latest planned domestic market expansion for U.S. recovered fiber.
The recently introduced legislation covers solar panels in residential, commercial and industrial use. | Heinz Trebuth/Shutterstock
Legislation in Arizona would establish recycling requirements for end-of-life solar panels, directing manufacturers to create a recycling program or face a per-panel fee at point-of-sale.