I noticed a strange combination of articles in a recent Google alert. According to one headline, “The Media Pivots Away From ‘Recycling is Dying’ Message” But the very next item in the list proclaimed, “Recycling Is Dead. Now What?”
Although the two headlines seem in direct contradiction, the two articles reached similar conclusions.
Here’s the opening of the latter article:
Is recycling as we know it really dead? In a word, yes. For a variety of reasons, some global in nature, the way we once collected and disposed of recyclable trash is over.
Notice, however, the important qualification: “recycling as we know it.” Here’s the opening of the former article:
After months of articles and broadcasts telling Americans that recycling is dying, that the recycling fad is passing, a new message is emerging. Recycling is not dying although it has been severely challenged by both China’s import restrictions and a pervasive single stream system [that] is no longer sustainable.
It claims that the media have changed their tune but admits that we can’t continue to recycle the way we did before the Chinese crackdown. So what can we learn from these two articles?
Some problems with recycling as we know it
Economic problems
Wastepaper bales ready to be made into something.
When recycling first started in the 1970s, it required source separation. That is, the consumer or business separated paper from plastic from metal from glass.
In the 1990s, waste haulers and municipal governments began to offer single stream recycling. Consumers and businesses needed only to separate recyclables from trash. Single stream recycling reduced hauling costs. Haulers made more profit. But sorting everything became a more complicated and expensive process.
In the process, recycling programs began to accept more and more different things. I can remember when I could recycle newspapers, but not magazines or anything else with glossy paper. Later, I could set plastic containers with the numbers 1 or 2 out at the curb, but numbers 3-7 had to go in the trash. Now, the number doesn’t matter.
Our markets depend on the law of supply and demand. In recycling, the supply remains constant. Households and businesses tend to set out the same amount of recyclable material every week. Demand fluctuates. China used to buy a large share of our processed recyclables. In January 2018, it placed severe restrictions on what it will accept.
With the Chinese market closed, demand for the paper and plastic it no longer accepts has been drastically reduced. The cost of recycling has greatly increased, so much so that many waste haulers, including city-run operations, have refused to collect recycling any more.
Once a material recovery facility sorts everything, it might not be able to find a buyer. So it collects, sorts, and bales materials. Some of them eventually have to send sorted bales of recyclables to a landfill or incinerator.
This is not the first time that demand has crashed. The recycling industry recovered from previous crashes and will certainly do so again. But let’s not blame China. “We have met the enemy, and they is us.”
We the people, doing recycling wrong
China closed its markets not because it wants to get out of the recycling business, but because the world sent it an inferior, contaminated product. Bales that should be limited to a single kind of paper, for example, contained other kinds of paper. Or some kind of plastic. Or a dirty diaper.
No one should put dirty diapers in their recycling. They do. Material recovery facilities ought to remove dirty diapers in the sorting process. They don’t get them all. Weeks or months later, a shipping container with that dirty diaper pulls into a Chinese port. And someone has to deal with that now especially disgusting and unhealthy bale.
Single stream recycling increased participation. At the same time, acceptance of virtually all kinds of paper and plastic increased public confusion. Each municipality publicizes what it will and will not accept. Neighboring municipalities often have a somewhat different list.
Some things should never be put out to the curb. And it’s not just dirty diapers and other garbage. Plastic bags, six-pack rings, and wire coat hangers tangle the sorting equipment. Scrap metal is too heavy for it to handle. All these items and more endanger workers at the sorting facility.
Plastic coffee cups are a mixture of paper and plastic. They are but one example of composite materials that current recycling technology can’t handle. Styrofoam isn’t a composite material, but it breaks into little pieces. There’s no way to separate it once it gets into the machinery, so those little pieces contaminate everything else.
Current sorting equipment also can’t distinguish clean paper from paper contaminated with some kind of oil or grease. But if someone doesn’t find it and discard it, a little contaminated paper can ruin a whole batch at a factory that makes recycled paper.
Not all recycling facilities put out a bad product
Bales of recycled plastic ready for sale
The same week’s Google alert had an article highlighting the Scott Area Recycling Center, which serves the Quad Cities area in Iowa and Illinois.
The article shows what happened to prices the facility receives between August 2016 and February 2018. A few commodities actually command higher prices, but the value of mixed paper plummeted from $75 per ton to $2.25. The value of the overall output has declined from $106.52 to $58.52.
It costs the facility $80 per ton to collect, sort, bale, and transport recyclables. Since it receives less than that from their sale, recycling costs the Scott facility $22 per ton. That’s still less than the cost of sending it to the landfill.
But as the article points out, the facility has buyers for everything it collects—except for the trash that never should have been put in the recycling. And all those buyers use the materials to make new products.
Scott has this level of success despite the fact that so many other operations have had to cease or curtail operations. Two factors drive it.
First, it has never relied on China but has always found domestic markets for everything. Its location far from the coasts may have something to do with that.
But second and most important, it offers a very clean product. Area residents follow directions for what to put at the curb. And the facility has both the equipment and personnel to do a superior job of sorting. It has an excellent reputation among buyers of recyclables. In contrast, some places in the country have up to a 20% contamination rate.
Even for the best-run facilities, 2019 will be a difficult year. The industry is stuck between what recycling has been and what it ought to become.
Prerequisites for the future of recycling
Here are some aspects of recycling as we don’t know it yet. Some of them, at least, are starting to happen.
- The public must do a better job of separating recycling from trash. That begins by paying attention to the literature cities and towns send out about what to put in the recycling containers—and what not to.
- The public must accept the end of single-stream collection and sort recycling by category. And waste haulers must devise ways to make separation reasonably convenient.
- In the meantime, sorting facilities must reduce contamination in their output.
- American entrepreneurs must develop local markets for recyclables, now that China is no longer pricing them out of the market. In particular, since glass is so heavy, we need to have many more small, local facilities that can produce new glass from old.
- These entrepreneurs must also find a way to make their recycled products more economical than those made from virgin materials.
- Industry must reduce its reliance on non-biodegradable single-use packaging.
- Society must reduce the amount of waste we produce to begin with.
Advancing technology will help. For example, scientists have found bacteria that consume PET (no. 1) plastic and isolated the enzyme that breaks it down. Others have found a new process to recycle polypropylene (no. 5) into a nearly virgin state. In other words, it can potentially transform polypropylene from a low-grade waste into a profitable product.
The time will come when it will be possible to recycle more than we do and actually make a profit from it. I have reported on several promising technologies that have not yet achieved industrial-scale production. That takes time, but the first step in any new technology is to prove an idea’s viability.
It would also help if we no longer require governments to collect, sort, and sell recyclables. We should look into Extended Producer Responsibility. Manufacturers ought to bear responsibility for the entire lifecycle of their products.
Related posts on Sustaining Our World:
What does the Chinese crackdown on recycling mean?
Recycling in the wake of the Chinese crackdown
One year after the Chinese recycling ban
Beware: you’re probably doing recycling wrong!
EPR: is it a solution to our recycling crisis?
Photo credits:
Recycling container. Some rights reserved by City of St. Petersburgr
Wastepaper bales. Source unknown
Plastic bags. Public domain from Wikimedia Commons
Plastic bales. Some rights reserved by Nick Saltmarsh.
Polartec Repreve 100. Polartec
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