China has announced further tariffs on U.S. recyclables. | chuyuss/Shutterstock
U.S. exporters who are still moving OCC and other recyclables to China may face higher costs, after the Chinese government last week announced additional tariffs on key scrap materials.
Indonesia’s government has been developing more rigorous import restrictions for recovered fiber for the past several months. | Unureanu Catalina Oana/Shutterstock
After months of uncertainty about recovered paper restrictions in Indonesia, the nation’s government has opted to evaluate bale contamination using two separate categories, according to multiple industry groups.
During the first six months of 2019, India brought in 156 million pounds of U.S. scrap plastics. | Avigator Fortuner/Shutterstock
Recovered plastic has largely stopped flowing from the U.S. into India, which until recently has been among the top importers of the material.
U.S. exporters shipped out 773 million pounds of scrap plastic in the first half of 2019. | aapsky/Shutterstock
Federal trade statistics released last week show U.S. export volumes for the first six months of 2019. Recycled plastics have seen a major drop when compared with figures from a year ago.
The returned containers held a total of 3.2 million pounds of material. | porjai kittawornrat/Shutterstock
More Southeast Asian nations are sending contaminated recyclables back to their originating country, as governments in the region continue to grapple with higher scrap plastic and paper import volumes.
Indonesia has become the fourth largest importer of U.S. recovered paper. | Naruedom Yaempongsa/Shutterstock
A top importer of U.S. recovered paper continues to develop new quality criteria for inbound shipments, despite previous signs the country had settled on specific contamination thresholds.
2017 brought the lowest volume of film recovered and sold since 2010. | taniascamera/Shutterstock
Non-bottle mixed plastics and film recycling have experienced their first major drops in a decade, two studies indicate. But amid the challenges, domestic use of both streams increased.
Regulatory changes could prevent the U.S. from exporting mixed plastics to a number of countries. | rawf8/Shutterstock
Federal regulators are asking countries that are major buyers of U.S. recyclables to refrain from implementing new trade restrictions laid out in the Basel Convention, a treaty covering global scrap material shipments.
As the industry catches its collective breath during this holiday week, we’re offering up a rundown of our biggest stories from January through June of 2019.
Bill Moore at WasteExpo 2019.
North America’s residential mixed-paper prices are deep in the negative numbers in some areas. That pain will likely persist for some time, one analyst predicts.