The Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) says China has notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) of its intent to ban the import of mixed paper, “most scrap plastics” and metal slags and drosses by the end of 2017.

 

ISRI says the plastic scrap grades covered by the proposed ban include “polymers of ethylene, styrene, vinyl chloride and PET [polyethylene terephthalate].”

 

Whether all grades classified in the United States as “mixed paper” would be banned is not entirely clear. A press release from the United Kingdom-based The Recycling Association describes the ban request as covering “unsorted waste paper,” in addition to “all plastics scrap, certain metal recycling residues, textiles and all unsorted waste or scrap.”

 

The news release also quotes Colin Clarke, who is with United Kingdom-based Mark Lyndon Paper Enterprises, as saying, “For the time being, we are still able to export OCC [old corrugated containers], mixed paper and other grades to China, as it is only unsorted waste paper imports that have been banned.”

 

Clarke continues, “The word from China is that we purchase a grade made to a global specification and not unsorted papers. Normal caveats apply when dealing with the Chinese authorities that if bad shipments are received, then mixed papers in particular could be at threat of a ban.”

 

ISRI’s 2016 specifications for exported paper grades include three in the mixed paper category. The hard mixed paper (HMP) grade specification refers to it being sorted and consisting of “less than 10 percent groundwood content.” The soft mixed paper grade spec also uses the word “sorted,” but says it is “not limited as to type of fiber content.” The residential mixed paper grade spec makes no mention of sorting, and says the grade consists of paper “not limited as to type of fiber content.”

 

ISRI says it has “already notified the Office of the United States Trade Representative and the U.S. Department of Commerce [of] the devastating impact such a ban will have on the global recycling industry, especially because ISRI has heard that China is considering additional notifications in the future on other scrap materials.”

 

Additionally, ISRI President Robin Wiener says upon hearing about the ban, says ISRI “immediately briefed U.S. officials in preparation for [the July 19, 2017] U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue (CED) in Washington.”

 

More than $5.6 billion in scrap commodities were exported from the United States to China in 2016, says ISRI. “The trade in specification-grade commodities – metals, paper and plastics – between the United States and China is of critical importance to the health and success of the U.S.-based recycling industry. If implemented, a ban on scrap imports will result in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and closure of many recycling businesses throughout the United States.”

 

An International Scrap Trade Database released by ISRI in April 2017 showed that China imported 29.2 million metric tons of recovered fiber in 2015, a figure that represented more than half of the world’s cross-border traded scrap paper.

 

The same database indicated China imported more than 7.3 million metric tons of plastic scrap in 2015, representing 48 percent of the globally traded total. That number likely declined in 2016 and has shrunk further in 2017, as Chinese customs and environmental agencies have been inspecting and closing down plastic recycling facilities.

 

ISRI adds, “In any given year, approximately one-third of the scrap recycled in the United States is prepared for shipment to the export market, and China is the recycling industry’s largest customer. This includes more than $1.9 billion in scrap paper (13.2 million tons) and $495 million in scrap plastics (or 1.42 million tons).

 

Ocean freight companies may also raise questions about the ban, as scrap materials represent a significant percentage of the “backhaul” journey via which 20- and 40-foot containers make a return trip from North America or Europe back to China.

 

Regarding the potential economic impact of the ban in the U.S., Wiener adds, “More than 155,000 direct jobs are supported by the U.S. industry's export activities, earning an average wage of almost $76,000 and contributing more than $3 billion to federal, state, and local taxes. A ban on imports of scrap commodities into China would be catastrophic to the recycling industry.”

The Boulder Valley school district in Colorado is recycling thousands of pounds of construction and demolition (C&D) debris, books and electronics while renovating its schools, a report by the Daily Camera says. More than 100,000 pounds of steel furniture, 85,000 books and 81,000 pounds of electronics have been recycled or reused so far.

A $576 million bond issue that was approved by voters in 2014 allowed the district to make reuse and recycling a priority, the report says. The requirement to reuse and recycle materials was included in vendor contracts for several projects.

Three Boulder Valley elementary schools, Boulder’s Creekside, Douglass and Broomfield’s Emerald, are getting new buildings scheduled to open in August. A new preschool through eighth grade building in Erie’s Flatiron Meadows neighborhood is also set to open in August, with the gyms, music room and lockers being finished in October. Other schools are undergoing repairs and renovations and will be getting new furniture for libraries and classrooms.

The report says the district set a goal of diverting 75 percent of its C&D debris, including wood, concrete and steel, from landfills. Sixty percent of the debris was recycled before the bond was issued. At Emerald, 92 percent of the debris was diverted from landfills.

The report says furniture and curriculum materials are first sent to other schools for use before being recycled. Art room furniture from Douglass elementary is now at a different school, and more than 85,000 books have been donated to other schools or charities. One thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine cubic feet of supplies have been sent to RAFT Colorado, a teacher resource in Denver.

What could not be reused or donated in terms of technology, the report says, was sent to MeTech Recycling, an electronics recycling center in Denver. Maintenance staff also pulled door hardware, clocks, electrical components, hardware and smoke detectors from the old buildings for reuse or recycling.

Midwest Fiber Recycling, headquartered in Decatur, Illinois, has announced the acquisition of Community Resource Inc. (CRI), Urbana, Illinois. The merger offers the Champaign-Urbana area additional recycling services and gives businesses the opportunity to reduce the amount of material being sent to the landfill. The transaction closed July 17, 2017.

Todd Shumaker, director of sales and procurement for Midwest Fiber Recycling, says, “We are excited about our acquisition of Community Resource Inc. We will be changing the name to Midwest Fiber Recycling of Urbana, to fall in line with the branding of our other five recycling facilities in Illinois and Indiana.”

Shumaker adds that Midwest Fiber Recycling will invest in improvements to the former CRI facility designed to improve efficiency and to give the location the ability to process a higher volume and a wider variety of material. “Along with the services already being offered by the site, this facility will become a depot for transferring single-stream collected material back to our material recovery facility (MRF) in Normal, Illinois,” he says.

The companies’ combined capabilities also will lead to near- and long-term growth opportunities, creating more “green jobs,” a news release issued by Midwest Fiber Recycling states.

“We will be looking to grow supply with new customer acquisition and within the base of customers we already service by offering creative recycling solutions, which may include plastic recycling, gaylord and box reuse programs, composting, alternative landfill options for hard-to-recycle materials and a total managed approach to waste and recycling,” Shumaker says. “Each of these suppliers will also have access to our real-time recycling metrics via our custom designed customer web portal.”

CRI and its President Matt Snyder have been providing recycling services to commercial and industrial businesses since 1996. CRI uses a combination of company-owned hauling equipment and contracted carriers across the United States to ship approximately 1,500 truckloads of recyclables annually.

Snyder will stay on in an advisory role with the company for a short time following the acquisition but plans to fully retire eventually to travel with his wife, Shumaker says.

Midwest Fiber Recycling has served central Illinois since 1990 and currently operates facilities in the Illinois cities of Bloomington-Normal, Decatur, Springfield and Peoria and in Terre Haute, Indiana. The company says it has more than 375,000 square feet of processing and warehousing facilities and keeps more than 300 million pounds of recyclables per year.

In addition to providing recycling services, Midwest Fiber also operates a confidential document destruction division and a food composting program.

Steve Wong, the executive president of the China Scrap Plastic Association (CSPA) and a member of the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) Plastics Committee, has alerted fellow recyclers that a media report on a Chinese state television network has provided data on inspections carried out at plastics recycling facilities in that nation.

 

Wong says a report from CCTV 13 news broadcast Saturday, July 15, 2017, included information provided by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) with results of its month-long inspection campaign targeted against nearly 1,800 licensed factories with import permits for plastic scrap.

 

According to the report, through July 14 (representing the first 14 days if the month-long campaign), of the 1,792 establishments targeted:

• 888 locations had been inspected;
• 590 of them, or 66 percent, were found to have rules violations during inspection;
• 383 locations had their production suspended;
• 53 locations were determined to be closed;
• 349 locations have been put under investigation based on their rule violations; and
• at those 349 locations, 871 total violations were identified.

Factories with rules violations found can have their import permit applications suspended for one year, writes Wong.  He says the MEP will adopt a “strict rules-based approach in approving applications for import permits.”

 

The MEP also says it will maintain “stringent supervision measures [to] ensure gradual rule compliance [by all] factories.”