The action toward more environmentally friendly products is involving major players in the payment-card industry.
It used to be that “green payments” meant dollar bills, but not anymore.
The action toward more environmentally friendly products is involving major players in the payment-card industry.
It used to be that “green payments” meant dollar bills, but not anymore.
The graph below shows the downstream trends for four major plastic resins collected for recycling in the U.S. and Canada going back to 2009 (the graph stops at 2017 because that is the most recent year for which figures are available).
From 2009 to 2016, the total amount of post-consumer plastic exported to overseas markets from the U.S. and Canada stayed relatively stable, but that number dropped considerably in 2017. That fact is hardly surprising: China stated in 2017 that it was planning to implement its import ban on many grades of recovered material at the outset of 2018, and the announcement itself caused major market shifts.
On the domestic processing front, the total amount climbed steadily before plateauing between 2016 and 2017. With more material needing a home as many Asian markets enact restrictions, opportunity exists for continued domestic processing growth. The keys will be infrastructure improvements to deliver cleaner loads to plastic reclaimers and greater end market demand for the recycled resins.
This month’s Data Corner was produced by More Recycling.
This article appeared in the October 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.
KDC and Celadon noted that in North America e-commerce trends are driving higher OCC generation in the residential recycling stream. | ja images/Shutterstock
A technology company and investment firm say they will develop two North American facilities processing more than 800,000 tons per year of mixed paper and OCC into recycled pulp and paper.
News about recycling-related legislation made the most-read list in November. | Yi Chen Chiang/Shutterstock
Stories about state and federal legislation, recovered material markets and the national recycling rate drew our readers’ attention last month.
A survey of over a dozen Northeast MRFs showed a decrease in the value of a ton of recyclables in the third quarter. | Benjamin Clapp/Shutterstock
The blended value of a ton of recyclables in the Northeast U.S. has dropped by about one-fifth, a MRF survey shows.
The RECYCLE Act is the second federal recycling grants bill to be introduced in the last week. | nate samui/Shutterstock
Lawmakers in Washington, D.C. have introduced another bill that creates a federal recycling grants program.
Packaging EPR is already in place in British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Quebec. | One Photo / Shutterstock
New Brunswick will require that manufacturers pay for the end-of-life collection and processing of the packaging materials they produce.
