Municipal programs in the Pacific Northwest continue to feel the impacts of China’s import restrictions, and multiple local programs are halting acceptance of certain materials in response.
Municipal programs in the Pacific Northwest continue to feel the impacts of China’s import restrictions, and multiple local programs are halting acceptance of certain materials in response.
The upstream impacts of China’s import restrictions have been increasingly covered in national and local press, raising the level of public consciousness about where recyclables ultimately end up and how that could all change.
The U.S. OCC market plummeted last week as China substantially slows its recovered material imports. Inside China, the lack of import capability has driven domestic OCC prices sky high.
For Sonoco Recycling, which collects, sorts, and sells recycled materials, China’s imports restrictions have particularly stung in one area: mixed-paper bales.
When it made landfall on Aug. 25, Hurricane Harvey became the wettest tropical cyclone to ever hit the U.S., dumping more than five feet of water on Houston. The resulting floods have impacted the recycling industry in multiple ways, driving up prices for virgin plastics, hampering freight systems and halting curbside collections.
One report indicates that buyers in China are desperately seeking domestic sources of recovered paper. Meanwhile, low-value plastics are flooding the European market, but processors there have limited ability to handle those loads.
DJ VanDeusen of WestRock speaks at the Resource Recycling Conference.
Some of the key recovered commodities generated by materials recovery facilities have been fetching high prices lately, including aluminum and fibers. But China’s import restrictions have introduced an element of the unknown in the market.
Recycling processors report that early September pricing for recovered plastic and aluminum packaging rose slightly over August levels.
A joint-venture plastics recovery facility in Maryland will end operations in the coming days, citing challenges in the post-consumer plastics industry and pointing to a need to upgrade its equipment.
Aluminum rolling and recycling company Novelis saw its revenue during the April-June period rise 16 percent year over year, an increase driven by higher sales volumes and metal prices.