For North America’s largest garbage and recycling companies, 2017 overall was a good year in recycling. That being said, the fourth quarter was a bad one for the industry.
For North America’s largest garbage and recycling companies, 2017 overall was a good year in recycling. That being said, the fourth quarter was a bad one for the industry.
Clarissa Morawski
It’s no secret that China is a leader in international world trade. For years, the country has been a major importer of many types of foreign goods, including timber, dairy products, and petrochemicals. China is also the world’s largest importer of waste. Last year, Chinese manufacturers and recyclers imported 7.3 million metric tons of waste plastics (valued at $3.7 billion), accounting for 56 percent of world imports in that category. It also took in more than half of the world’s exports of waste paper.
Credit: MAGNIFIER/Shutterstock
Chinese authorities have issued the first five rounds of recyclable-material import permits for 2018. Compared with 2017, the country has allowed substantially less recycled plastic to enter the country and approved permits for far fewer companies across all material types.
Credit: Peter Gudella_Shutterstock
Amid market disruption from China’s import restrictions, Republic Services continued to realize recycling revenue gains last year.
Brent Bell, Waste Management
Leaders from Waste Management and two giant consumers of recovered fiber last week detailed the variety of ways their operations have been impacted by recent import shifts in Asia. They also laid out some ideas to help lift material quality.
Recyclables exported out of the U.S. are moving to Southeast Asia, where reclaimers and mills are dramatically increasing purchases as China closes its doors to recovered materials. New figures illustrate that shift.
A representative from a European firm that has felt the direct impacts of China’s import restrictions on recovered plastic recently offered an inside look at the fallout from the unprecedented disruption to industry trade.
The global recovered paper market experienced “a quite challenging year” in 2017, according to an expert at paper industry research firm RISI. And those challenges are only expected to continue as Chinese import restrictions ramp up.
Update: China has filed its official contamination proposals with the World Trade Organization, and they list a 0.5 percent threshold for most recyclables, down from the 1 percent limit that was previously considered.
China will shift its planned threshold for contamination in scrap paper imports from 0.3 percent to 1 percent, seemingly in response to concerns the original proposed limit would be impossible to hit.
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China officially announced last month that most inbound loads of recyclables will be allowed no more than 0.5 percent contamination, which is slightly less stringent than initial proposals. But industry executives recently noted that when it comes to recovered paper, that’s largely a moot point.