50/2018 Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not - The New York Times
Americans recycle roughly 66 million tons of material each year, according to the most recent
figures from the Environmental Protection Agency, about one-third of which is exported. The
majority of those exports once went to China, said David Biderman, the executive director of the
Solid Waste Association of North America, a research and advocacy group.
But American scrap exports to China fell by about 35 percent in the first two months of this year,
after the ban was implemented, said Joseph Pickard, chief economist for the Institute of Scrap
Recycling Industries, a trade group.
“It’s a huge concern, because China has just been such a dominant overseas market for us,” Mr.
Pickard said.
In particular, exports of scrap plastic to China, valued at more than $300 million in 2015, totaled
just $7.6 million in the first quarter of this year, down 90 percent from a year earlier, Mr. Pickard
said. Other countries have stepped in to accept more plastics, but total scrap plastic exports are
still down by 40 percent this year, he said.
“There is a significant disruption occurring to U.S. recycling programs,” Mr. Biderman said. “The
concern is if this is the new normal.”
Curbside recycling is typically hauled by a private company to a sorting plant, where marketable
goods are separated out. Companies or local governments then sell the goods to domestic or
overseas processors. Some states and cities prohibit these companies from dumping plastic,
paper and cardboard, but some local officials — including in Oregon, Massachusetts and various
municipalities in Washington State — have granted waivers so that unmarketable materials can
be sent to the landfill.
Recycling companies “used to get paid” by selling off recyclable materials, said Peter Spendelow,
a policy analyst for the Department of Environmental Quality in Oregon. “Now they’re paying to
have someone take it away.”
In some places, including parts of Idaho, Maine and Pennsylvania, waste managers are
continuing to recycle but are passing higher costs on to customers, or are considering doing so.
“There are some states and some markets where mixed paper is at a negative value,” said Brent
Bell, vice president of recycling at Waste Management, which handles 10 million tons of recycling
per year. “We'll let our customers make that decision, if they’d like to pay more and continue to
recycle or to pay less and have it go to landfill.”
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