COMMITTED TO CLEANING UP RECYCLING

COMMITTED TO

“Cleaning Up” Recycling

by Daniel Butler Municipal Relations San Diego County Waste Management of North County

The recycling industry is currently going through a serious downturn due to import policies being enforced by China to reduce trash in recyclables put into effect in early 2018. Their action stems from something that has become all too common in recycling programs across North America: recycling contamination, or the percentage of trash mixed with recyclables.

Today, the average contamination rate among communities and businesses sits at around 25%. That means that about 1 in 4 items placed in a recycling container is actually not recyclable through collection programs, and this creates enormous problems for the recycling economy.

China – a major importer of recyclables – continues to issue new rules on the types of materials it will accept, including a 0.5% maximum on recycling contamination. That means that the 25% contamination rate we see today must reach virtually zero for those items to be recycled. Anything above that 0.5% contamination will be rejected by China, shipped back to the United States, and eventually that material will have to go to a landfill. These new guidelines result in higher processing costs while commodity prices are continuing their downward trend in value.

The recycling industry, in response to China’s strict acceptance policies, began sending material to Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar. However, these countries have now committed to follow in the footsteps of China and restrict foreign materials from coming to their ports. Domestic processing facilities are also being explored, but any new industry-wide developments could be at least five years out.

Many of us grew up with a different kind of recycling program than we have today. Back in the day, we separated items at the curb each week, making it easier to process paper, aluminum, glass and plastics into different material streams. All the right things were being recycled.

In the early 2000s, recycling changed with the arrival of “single-stream”. Through this process, residents and businesses could put all acceptable recyclables into a single bin or cart, and those items would then be separated at a sorting facility. Over a short period of time, thanks to the convenience of single-stream, more people began to participate as recycling rates soared to their highest levels.

Unfortunately, the negative side-effect of increased participation due to the convenience of commingled bins and carts was non-recyclables finding their way into the recycling stream – things like plastic bags, organic waste (food, liquid and yard waste), rubber