Prices for curbside natural high-density polyethylene have climbed even higher over the past month. Paper prices remain painfully low.
Prices for curbside natural high-density polyethylene have climbed even higher over the past month. Paper prices remain painfully low.
Indorama has stated it will invest more than $1 billion in recycling over the next five years. | RecycleMan/Shutterstock
Indorama Ventures, the world’s biggest prime PET producer, has acquired another U.S. plastics recycling company, this time on the West Coast.
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.
PreZero Polymers’ Jurupa Valley, Calif. campus, which is set to open early next year, will process post-consumer film. | Image courtesy of PreZero US.
A joint venture is set to launch two U.S. processing plants in 2020, bringing new outlets for lower-grade materials. Investments in the projects will total at least $90 million. Continue Reading
The price of recovered natural HDPE has climbed again, in some areas breaking recent records. The price of OCC dropped further, however.
Waste watchdog Basel Action Network tracked containers of mixed paper that were shipped from the U.S. to Indonesia and were rejected. | Naruedom Yaempongsa/Shutterstock
Contaminated bales of recycled paper stonewalled at Indonesian ports were not returned to the U.S. as promised, according to environmental organizations.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation released an update on organizations’ progress toward their global plastic packaging commitments. | Aykut Erdogdu/Shutterstock
Coca-Cola Co. uses considerably more recycled resin than many of its global packaging peers. But, like others, it still has a long way to go to hit its ambitious goals. Continue Reading
Green Impact Plastics will build a PET thermoform processing facility in California after reclaimer rPlanet Earth agreed to buy its output. | Courtesy of Green Impact Plastics
A Mexican company that developed a system to process post-consumer PET thermoforms will open a $7 million plant in the Los Angeles area. It’s now on the hunt for thermoform bales. Continue Reading
Recology CEO Michael Sangiacomo told an audience at the 2019 Resource Recycling Conference and Trade Show his company would help bankroll a California initiative taking aim at plastic waste. | Brian Adams Photography
The CEO of West Coast hauler Recology recently teamed up with environmentalists to submit an initiative that would put single-use plastics management in front of voters in the state. Continue Reading
Jenna Jambeck was the keynote at this year’s Resource Recycling Conference and Trade Show, held in late summer. | Resource Recycling Conference/Brian Adams Photography
The statistic has taken on almost household familiarity: 91% of plastic ever created has not been recycled, and a massive amount has become litter. Jenna Jambeck, a researcher who helped formulate that number, recently spoke about solutions to the pollution problem.