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US Recycling Companies Face Upheaval From China Scrap Ban (wsj.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the cause-and-effect dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: U.S. companies that collect waste for recycling are weighing higher prices and other changes to their operations since China upended the industry when it stopped accepting much of the scrap material Americans have been shipping there for decades. The top two solid waste services companies in the U.S., Waste Management Inc. and Republic Services Inc., both recently pulled back profit projections in their recycling divisions based on China's new policies, which have created a glut in scrap markets and sent global prices for scrap material plummeting.

According to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc., 31% of U.S. scrap commodity exports worth a total of $5.6 billion were sent to China last year. It was cheap for recycling collectors to send scrap to China because ocean carriers offered deeply discounted prices to get shipping containers back to Asia after they had arrived at U.S. ports packed with goods made in Chinese factories. "We were happy to send material back in them for pennies on the dollar," Mr. Coupland said. Now it's gotten more complicated. Mr. Coupland said Republic Services has found new buyers in Malaysia, India and other markets, but fewer ships make direct trips there from the U.S., driving up transportation costs. Global prices for used materials have plummeted, so Republic loses money on most of the recycled scrap it now sells overseas. That cost is increasingly likely to get passed along to U.S. households and businesses.

26 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Recycle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Recycle = sending to a dump overseas

    But at least it feels good to save the environment!

  2. Best Buy is still taking many types of e-waste by Kargan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not sure how much longer they are going to keep it up, but I just took in a UPS tonight for recycling and mentioned that I had removed the battery, thinking I would have to take it to a Batteries Plus or something. Nope, the customer service rep said they take all kinds of batteries, any that are rechargeable.

    I personally very much appreciate the chance to recycle virtually anything electronic there at no charge whatsoever.

    I know they will no longer take monitors or TVs for free, but I don't know of anywhere that does.

    --
    Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
    1. Re:Best Buy is still taking many types of e-waste by Hognoxious · · Score: 2, Funny

      You could have a law that says that any company that sells them must take them back for recycling.

      Crazy talk, I know. And if they did pass a law like that it would lead to compulsory gay marriage and socialised medicine with death camps. And Sharia law. Probably overnight.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  3. California by Archfeld · · Score: 3, Informative

    Gotta love California. There is a service called Ynotrecycle, that will come to your address and pick up monitors for free.

    http://www.ynotrecycle.com/

    --
    errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
  4. opportunity for 3d printing technology by Narcocide · · Score: 2

    what if you could just feed aluminum cans and plastic bottles to your 3d printer and it could just recycle them directly into whatever you wanted?

    1. Re:opportunity for 3d printing technology by spiritplumber · · Score: 2

      I have a Filastruder and it basically does this (at least for ABS). Get one at 3dsupplysource. Laser optional.

      --
      Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
    2. Re:opportunity for 3d printing technology by hazardPPP · · Score: 2

      The problem isn't the actual recycling. The problem is that China accepts scrap with high levels of contaminants while nobody else does. Why? Well they were really just putting this stuff in the ground, burning it or dumping it in the ocean.

      Well, no. I don't understand why everyone assumes that just because recycling was being shipped overseas then it must have been just dumped in a landfill or in the sea. The Chinese are too stupid to recycle, or what?

      Yes, there was certainly some dumping going and some shady "recycling" companies in China were not really recycling everything. This however, was not the whole industry. The main reason China was accepting scrap with high levels of contaminants was that labour in China was cheap enough to have people go through it manually and separate the contanimants from the useful stuff. Yes, the contaminants (and the scrap that had become too contaminated to use) was in the end getting dumped or burned (what else can be done with it?), but only after the useful scrap was separated and actually sent for recycling.

      What has changed? As China has gotten richer, labour costs have risen. If you have less people willing to work for peanuts to sort through garbage and separate the PET bottles from the used wet wipes, it's more likely the whole shipment would be dumped. Chinese authorities are not stupid...also, as China has become richer, it has started producing a lot more garbage of its own. China has enough of its own garbage to deal with, it doesn't want other people's anymore, naturally. So they said we're glad to still take your recyclables, under the condition that they are clean and ready to recycle immediately - you do your own sifting through your own garbage.

      Finally, China has ambitious plans to upgrade its economy to focus on high-tech, high-wage work...this is just one piece of that puzzle, discouraging low-paying, low-tech industries.

    3. Re:opportunity for 3d printing technology by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

      I don't understand why everyone assumes that just because recycling was being shipped overseas then it must have been just dumped in a landfill or in the sea.
      ...
      Yes, there was certainly some dumping going and some shady "recycling" companies in China were not really recycling everything.
      ...
      Yes, the contaminants (and the scrap that had become too contaminated to use) was in the end getting dumped or burned

      And now you know why.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  5. Wait... by argStyopa · · Score: 2

    ...so you're saying we CAN'T just dump our shit in China and let them deal with it?

    That's so...unAmerican.

    --
    -Styopa
  6. The problem with paper contamination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    If my ignorant neighbors would quit throwing their used paper towels and greasy pizza box bottoms into the recycling bin, maybe the US could manage to achieve China's more stringent contamination rate requirements for paper recyclables.

    Not to mention people's habit of leaving liquid inside their drinking bottles and reinstalling the caps when throwing them into the recycle bin. C'mon guys, knock that stupid ignorant shit off.

    1. Re: The problem with paper contamination by zmooc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Making plastic is significantly less energy and thus CO2 intensive than glass, paper or metal, especially when recycled. Usually if it's cheap, it's also good for the environment. The only reason to ban plastic would be because consumers behave like idiots.

      --
      0x or or snor perron?!
  7. Re:You can't recycle everything by RhettLivingston · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you want to talk "used to"s, we used to buy things that were high quality, durable and repairable and keep them for generations. Recycling was as simple as handing it down.

    When people don't produce things for a living, they don't know how to recognize the quality under the pretty paint. That secondary effect is compounds the loss of the industries.

  8. Good by edi_guy · · Score: 2

    I think we all pretty much understand that recycling being sent to Asia (whether China, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, etc) either gets dumped into the ocean enroute or dumped across the slums in those countries. That whole scheme was an externality that Americans benefited from at the expense of others. Having China take the trash was so cheap, it also prevented development of better materials and processes around real recycling and reuse. Hopefully things like less packaging, cleaner packaging, compostables and fewer varieties of plastics used will now become more likely.

  9. Save the oceans - stop recycling plastic by japa · · Score: 2

    Much of the plastic collected for recycling in europe ends up to shady places in china and other less developed countries. In which the process of handling the waste is less than perfect.

    http://www.thegwpf.org/new-rep...
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
    "It is feared that an increasing proportion of waste set aside for recycling is now being thrown into the sea."

    I doubt the operators receiveing the waste make much difference with European waste and American waste. That is to say, most likely both will end to the environment. Shipping trash for recycling to some 3rd world country is a fraud. They may have cheap labor there, but I doubt they have the high tech and proper processes to handle everything cleanly and enviromental friendly way.

  10. When you have lemons... by russbutton · · Score: 5, Interesting
    What they should do is set up a recycling industry in Guatemala. You'd have a much shorter haul to transport all that stuff. You'd create a lot of jobs in a place that very much needs them and would inject some badly needed currency into their economy as well. The big reason people in Guatemala have been trying to get into the USA is that there are no jobs there other than the drug industry. NAFTA has enabled American farmers to dump cheap ag products there, totally destroying what ag economy they had. With few legit jobs, people there turned to the drug transport and trade business, which got so big that it has largely taken over the country. It's no wonder all those people want to come here.

    Create a new industry there, which will only benefit them and reduce the reason for leaving. It also gives a better place for us to send our recycling materials.

    Just a thought.

    1. Re:When you have lemons... by Enigma2175 · · Score: 2

      NAFTA has enabled American farmers to dump cheap ag products there, totally destroying what ag economy they had.

      1. How does NAFTA, which is an agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico, change how US agriculture producers can sell in Guatemala?
      2. How are US farmers, who have a much higher labor cost plus higher shipping costs, able to compete with the cheap Guatemalan labor available to local farmers?

      There certainly has been an uptick in Guatemalan immigration to the US coinciding with the rise of the drug trade and accompanying violence, but I haven't previously seen anything that attributes the rise to NAFTA. Perhaps you mean CAFTA-DR?

      --

      Enigma

    2. Re:When you have lemons... by russbutton · · Score: 2
      American farmers have much better tech than those in Guatemala. They're more mechanized and use much less labor. Shipping costs less than you think.

      The economy in Guatemala is a wreck, and the drug trade has the country a complete mess. That's why we're seeing so many trying to make their way into the USA. Condemming illegal immigrants to death through deportation isn't an effective answer.

      With this notion of creating a recycling industry in Guatemala, you kill two birds with one stone.

    3. Re:When you have lemons... by mcswell · · Score: 2

      I'm no Ag expert, in fact I know very little. But I've spent time in remote areas of southern Mexico, and semi-jungle areas of Ecuador and Colombia. And the kinds of crops that grow well there are often quite different from the crops that grow here. Fruit, yucca, black beans, coffee; I've never seen anyone try to grow wheat, soy etc. there. The only crop I know of that grows well in both places is corn. So I'm not sure how much competition there can be between Guatemalan farmers and American farmers. What US crops have been "dumped" in Guatemala?

  11. The actual issue by Luckyo · · Score: 3, Informative

    The actual problem here is that plastic is almost impossible to recycle when it's not properly cleaned and separated. Which is only really possible to to at the point of origin. Essentially the person taking out his plastic trash will have to properly separate it and wash it.

    Which is why countries where this is done, such as my native Finland exported almost none of their plastic to be recycled to China, and what we did, we still can export. Because people around here will literally wash their plastic garbage before taking it to the recycling bin. I mean literally wash it with water until it's reasonably clean. Which means that all that recycler has to do is to do a cursory check and then just fabricate it into pellets and it's good for reuse.

    Which incidentally is what Chinese still gladly take.

    What they will no longer take is general dirty plastic that is all but impossible to recycle without massive manpower investment.

    There will need to be a massive cultural shift to actually get people in countries that used to export dirty plastic as "recyclable" to actually sort and wash their own plastic waste so it is actually recyclable at a reasonable cost. Before that, so called "recycling companies" that used to take dirty unsorted plastic and pretend to recycle it will have to go bust because their business model no longer works. And that is unlikely to be in near future, as there are plenty of poor Asian and African states that still have manpower that is exceedingly cheap to dig through landfill full of plastic, separate it, clean it and take it to a dealer.

    1. Re:The actual issue by hazardPPP · · Score: 2

      There will need to be a massive cultural shift to actually get people in countries that used to export dirty plastic as "recyclable" to actually sort and wash their own plastic waste so it is actually recyclable at a reasonable cost.

      It would be easier to just ban 90-95% of plastic packaging. Which I think will happen in the end. We used to live in a world without plastic packaging, when consumer goods were packaged in materials that were less damaging to the environment - glass, paper and metal. You could make the case that plastic is essential in some small number (5-10%) of today's use cases. It's not essential to have water or Coca Cola in a plastic bottle, nor to have your tomatoes pre-wrapped in plastic foil, nor to have butter in a plastic tub.

  12. Mining Subsidy Dictates Recycling Market by retroworks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Fifteen years ago, China could not afford to waste the equivalent of the USA's General Mining Act of 1872. Signed by Ulysses S. Grant to speed western expansion during Apache Indian Wars etc, GMA set price of extraction on Federal Lands at $5 per acre, no royalties, no cleanup cost (14 of 15 largest USA Superfund Sites are hard rock mines on federal land). At least, China was not willing to let Australian, EU and USA mining and forestry companies operate on Chinese land without those subsidies. Recycling therefore won in the marketplace.

    Today China is trying to develop virgin material extraction industry to compete with BHP, Alcoa, etc., and has the capital.

    So the value of raw materials that had already been refined (value added) could be recognized by hand much more cheaply than extraction, but China CP now sees development of virgin material as a priority. What the WSJ article fails to consider is China's experience with rare earth metals - they can ban export and import, but remove the ban whenever someone else invests in competing with them. Right now, the prices of recycled scrap have dropped to a point where I'd expect China to start buying them again. Then ban them if the price goes up (using raw materials supplies they have developed). Just like USA refnining industry did to scrappers in the 1950s and 60s. Usually recyclables collected are not wasted, it's a question of price, and Chinese buying gave USA scrappers a lot of relief 15 years ago from the price command and control power of USA raw material purchasers. Like rare earth metal mining, this is about leverage.

    --
    Gently reply
  13. Re:Good news! by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    If we're not reusing the materials ourselves

    Who is "ourselves"? Humans? Or the Americans who were simply returning raw materials to China for manufacturing of new Chinese shit that is bought by Americans?

  14. Re:Good news! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    If we're not reusing the materials ourselves, it's not real recycling.

    Why is it important to recycle self-sufficiently at the national level, but not at the state or county level? Should, say, Delaware have facilities for recycling every possible product, since it isn't "real" if they send polypropylene bottles to New Jersey? What about Lichtenstein?

  15. Re:Recycling is overrated by blindseer · · Score: 2

    When it comes to wood, paper, and cardboard, we should just bury it. I recall a well know scientist (not known well enough for me to remember his name right now) saying how we should sequester carbon by growing trees and using it for lumber, when we tear down the houses the wood should just be buried in a landfill.

    That's Dr. Patrick Moore.
    http://ecosense.me/2017/01/10/...
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Dr. Moore was an early member of Greenpeace. He had to leave because the organization was losing sight of the science behind environmental protection and people in the organization stopped listening to him. Dr. Moore was originally anti-nuclear power but now sees nuclear power as valuable for reducing human impact on the environment. He's not a fan of wind and solar power.

    It seems that recycling glass and plastic are bad ideas, we should just put them in a landfill. Also bad for the environment is "organic" farming.
    http://ecosense.me/2017/01/18/...

    "People say you can't recycle too much. It turns out you can," says Mr. Porter, president of the environmental consulting firm, the Waste Policy Center, near Washington, D.C. "If you spend enough money, you can recycle anything. That doesn't mean you should."

    The recycling center near me stopped taking plastic bags, when I asked what I should do with them I was told to just toss them in the trash. So, that's what I did and that's what I plan to do in the future.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  16. Re:Good news! by MrMr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Funny you should mention that country:
    https://www.liechtenstein.li/e...

  17. Re:Good news! by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

    We have never had assurance that the material we send to China is actually being recycled. The controversy is over how much of it may just be dumped.