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.
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.
The U.S. in 2019 shipped 192,000 short tons of mixed paper to South Korea. | Mariusz Bugno/Shutterstock
A large buyer of U.S. scrap paper and plastic is planning measures to reduce imports and increase domestic recycling of those materials.
During recent earnings calls, a number of fiber company executives touched on pricing trends they are seeing around OCC and other grades.
One major U.S. mill operator is actively shipping recycled paper pulp to China, and another is installing equipment to bring in lower grades of paper feedstock. Those were a few takeaways from recent earnings calls from publicly traded paper firms.
So far this year China has approved 3.5 million short tons of recovered fiber for import. | luca pbl/Shutterstock
China recently issued its third round of recovered fiber import permits for 2020, and the volume being allowed in this round is far less than what was approved previously.
U.S. recovered fiber exports fell by roughly 3 million tons from 2018 to 2019. | StockStudio Aerials/Shutterstock
In 2019, recovered fiber exports from the United States experienced their largest year-over-year decline on record. U.S. scrap plastic exports also continued a substantial fall.
This story originally appeared in the January 2016 issue of Resource Recycling.
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Despite a year of market uncertainty, U.S. recovered paper exports increased in 2018, driven largely by OCC shipments. However, scrap plastic exports fell substantially as countries enacted stringent trade policies.
The growing smiles you see among recycling collectors and processors are because of continuing market improvement.
OCC and other recovered fiber grades are allowed in to China but with strict contamination thresholds. | noomcpk/Shutterstock
China bought less of the world’s recycled fiber in 2019, the second year in a row of major decreases in recycled material imports. And the country’s environmental ministry has reiterated plans for an all-out import ban next year.