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

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.

Comments

Best Buy is still taking many types of e-waste

[Kargan]

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.

Re:You can't recycle everything

[RhettLivingston]

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.

When you have lemons...

[russbutton]

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.

Mining Subsidy Dictates Recycling Market

[retroworks]

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.