Port of Shanghai. How many of those shipping containers are full of American recyclables?
At one time, China bought nearly half of America’s recyclables. Western states became especially dependent on the Chinese market.
No more.
We and other nations sent so much junk along with recyclables that China decided to stop being a dumping ground. Beginning this year, it has imposed strict limits on how much contamination it will accept.
But this new policy didn’t cause a recycling crisis. It hastened one already in evidence.
China now accepts less recyclable materials. As a result, the prices municipalities have always gotten for scrap plastic and paper have collapsed. Cardboard, for example, brings in less than half of what it did this time last year. Other Asian countries, such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, still buy materials that China now rejects, but instead of paying $150 per ton for mixed paper, they pay only $5 per ton.
How the recycling crisis developed
Mountain of plastic trash
This problem hasn’t come on suddenly. In the 1990s, China eagerly accepted imports of recyclables. Cities aggressively expanded the list of what they accepted in their recycling programs to keep more materials out of landfills. These new materials had less value as scrap.
And unfortunately, the public failed to sort recyclables from trash properly. We even toss food waste into our recycling containers. That discarded food especially contaminates otherwise valuable paper. Recently, contaminants have amounted to as much as 20% of materials shipped to China. Five years ago, the figure was closer to 10%, which is still ridiculously high.
Food waste is enough of a problem in American material recovery facilities (MRFs). Imagine the smell and health hazards if MRFs fail to remove it from product they ship to China! Chinese workers have had to take on the dangerous task of processing contaminated shipments. And the contaminants and ruined paper have had to go to Chinese landfills.
The current Chinese crackdown on recycling continues and intensifies a change of attitude that began years ago. I first wrote about plunging pricesin the recycling industry almost two years ago and noted that the Chinese had become more choosy about what they would accept.
The current state of the recycling crisis
MRF tipping floor
Effective this year, therefore, China will reject any shipment with more than 0.5% contamination.
The North American branch of China Certification and Inspection Group announced on May 3, 2018 that it would not process applications for scrap metal shipments or issue certificates from May 4 to June 4. During that time, it would inspect every container of scrap originating in the US to check for contaminants like plastic. (Anything that does not belong in a bale is a contaminant. Therefore, plastic contaminates bales of metal. Metal contaminates bales of plastic.)
The Wall Street Journal incorrectly reported that China had suspended imports of all recycled materials, not just scrap metal. It also speculated that the crackdown is related to the current disagreement between the US and China over tariffs and trade. Be that as it may, the move comes as a logical consequence of the crackdown on excessively contaminated shipments of recyclables announced long before the tariff issue arose.
But now, instead of making money by selling recyclables to processors like Waste Management, many municipalities must pay processors to defray their costs. And so they must charge higher fees to consumers to haul wastes, including recyclables, from the curb. Some MRFs have had to cease accepting materials and lay off workers. Some must landfill even bales of materials they have already processed, because it’s impossible to sell them and too expensive to keep them on hand waiting for prices to go up.
Some local recycling issues
Wastepaper bales ready to be made into something.
Cities in Arizona illustrate the problem of excessive contamination. Phoenix averages about 25% contamination, Gilbert 15-20%, and Mesa 13%, and Chandler 11%.
Last year, Chandler earned more than half a million dollars, at $25.50 per ton, from the sale of its recyclables to a MRF owned by United Fibers.
The change in Chinese policy will mean that it will have to pay more than a million dollars, at $61 per ton, for United Fibers to take them.
Not all cities in Arizona exported such a large proportion of their recyclables to China as Chandler, but all are seeing a decline in recycling revenues. At best, China’s new toughness has wreaked havoc on cities’ budgets and plans to increase recycling rates.
Not only must MRFs find ways to reduce the contamination of their output, citizens must be more careful about what they put in their recycling containers. Along with the more usual items that should never enter the recycling streamin the first place, United Fibers in Chandler has encountered an automobile manifold and a goat carcass! I wonder. Are such things a sign of mere stupidity, or active malice?
In San Juan Island, Washington, the recycling facility has stopped accepting comingled recycling. As of October 19, 2017, it started to accept only metal (including aluminum cans), clean and separated cardboard, and clean wood. Everything else has become trash. The nearby town of Friday Harbor contemplated discontinuing curbside recycling pickup. Such drastic curtailment of recycling programs has so far not affected that entire part of the state, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn of similar changes of policy here and there all up and down the West Coast.
It is not only the US that suffers shockwaves from Chinese refusal to be the world’s dumping ground any more. It has hit New Zealand and Australia hard, too. And Australian MRFs still achieve a 6-10% contamination rate.
The ultimate recycling solution: zero waste
Plastic bales
These new economic conditions will require permanent changes in the recycling business. More to the point, permanent changes in how society views recycling, waste management, and lifestyle.
Gina Dempster, a communications officer of the New Zealand recycling company Wastebusters, declares, “The ultimate goal is to recycle less, not more,” and “If recycling is the answer, then we’re asking the wrong question.”
Sustainability requires development of a circular economy. That is, we need to achieve zero waste. We can’t continue the model of make something, use it, and discard it. Being satisfied filling up recycling containers only perpetuates that wasteful system.
Going to a zero-waste mentality requires the model of make something, use it, and keep using it. If it wears out or breaks, repair it, upgrade it, remanufacture it—and recycle it only as a last resort. That, in turn, requires not making and using single-use, disposable products in the first place. Such a huge reorientation of social norms will not happen overnight. Fixing our recycling issues must be a huge step along the way.
In a way, China has been part of the problem for nearly 30 years. Dempster points out that, with China having been “like a massive magnet sucking nearly all the world’s recycling into its force field,” reprocessors elsewhere have found it difficult to compete. Building up domestic capacity will take time and money, but ultimately, MRFs will find shipping locally much less expensive than shipping to China.
Getting there from here
Trash and recycling truck
Increasing tipping fees for waste disposal can both supply some of the money for decreasing contaminants and provide an economic disincentive for wastefulness. Charging a deposit on bottles and cans would also encourage returning them instead of littering with them.
It may be necessary to give up on single-stream recycling, which enables residents to comingle all their recycling in a single container. Collecting paper separately would greatly reduce contamination. It would also cut down on participation in recycling programs and make collection more expensive.
Also, making municipal governments bear the financial responsibility for collecting and processing recyclables is not sustainable. Some kind of Extended Producer Responsibility, making waste the producer’s responsibility rather than the consumer’s, can cut down on waste at the source. It can also return potentially valuable materials to them more easily and efficiently than is the case now.
In the meantime, the recycling industry simply must make very low contamination rates a higher priority than it has so far. Domestic demand will have to grow to replace the diminished Chinese market. That is, more companies in the US and elsewhere will have to view recyclables as a resource and be willing to pay to receive them.
So far, no one in the world has developed uses for low-grade mixed plastics, those with the numbers 3-7. Why not? And why did municipalities start accepting them in the first place if no one wanted to buy them? Today’s MRFS separate PET (no. 1) and HDPE (no. 2), even to the point of separating colored from uncolored HDPE. There isn’t enough of any one kind of other plastic to make it worth separating it. If someone found a way to make, say, old yogurt cups into new yogurt cups more cheaply than making them with virgin plastic, it would become economical to sort them out at MRFs.
Instead of wringing our hands at the problem the Chinese crackdown has caused in the short term, let’s view it as an opportunity to improve our entire waste management and waste reduction system.
Sources:
China to suspend checks on U.S. scrap metal shipments, halting imports / Reuters. May 4, 2018
Chinese ban sends San Juan recyclables to landfills / Cali Bagby, Journal of the San Juan Islands. October 25, 2017
East Valley losing thousands in recycling revenue / Rick Barrs, East Valley Tribune [Tempe, Arizona]. May 14, 2018
Recycling, once embraced by businesses and environmentalists, now under siege / Bob Tita, The Wall Street Journal. May 15, 2018
Why we want to recycle less / Gina Dempster, Otago Daily Times. May 16, 2018
Photo credits:
Port of Shanghai. Public domain from Wikimedia Commons
Mountain of plastic trash. Some rights reserved by Shafiu Hussein.
MRF tipping floor. My photo
Wastepaper bales. Source unknown
Trash and recycling truck. Some rights reserved by fairfaxcounty
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