Flowing into 2015

Recyclers, like businesspeople in other sectors, enter 2015 uncertain about how the economy will perform in the upcoming year.

Economists are closely watching indicators and data in both Europe and China as they try to determine whether the EU can avoid recession and to what extent China’s economy is slowing down.

In North America and India gross domestic product (GDP) appears poised to keep growing in 2015, with recyclers in those two markets optimistic that the containerboard and other packaging sectors will experience steady growth.

The state of the recycling sector in both regions was discussed at the 2014 Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference, held in Chicago 8-10 Oct.

The quality of recovered fibre being collected in North America and shipped around the world was a topic of conversation in several of the event’s sessions, including at a session that featured a panel consisting of paper mill buyers.

Broken glass mixed into paper bales—usually the result of single-stream collection—continues to concern mill buyers, including Andrew Kern, who purchases fibre for the American mills of Ireland-based Smurfit-Kappa.

The presence of broken glass and other materials considered outthrows was also on the mind of Andrew Inneo of Canada-based Resolute Forest Products, which produces newsprint and other finished paper at mills in North America.

Inneo said Resolute has suffered from the decline in the generation of ONP (old newspapers). It is one of grades the mill uses, along with coated groundwood and overissue news, to make its newsprint.

Inneo commented that as recently as 2007, bales the company had been buying contained about 7% outthrows with 1.5% prohibitives on average. Currently, he said, the outthrow and prohibitive levels have more than doubled, making it much more difficult for the mechanical systems at the mills.

Buyers of ONP, including Inneo, also lamented the disappearance of the once bountiful grade. Especially scarce are ONP bales of reasonable quality.
 

Jerry Donahue, a buyer for a U.S. molded pulp facility of Finland-based Huhtamaki Inc., said the company has traditionally relied on No. 8 ONP and white blank news for its raw material. But, he told conference attendees, he has been challenged by the decline in ONP generation as well as by the growth in single-stream processing, which Donahue said has degraded the quality level of the fiber.

Recycling plant operator Cal Tigchelaar of Resource Management Cos., based in Illinois in the U.S., pointed to “volume-based garbage collection” systems that incentivise putting large or heavy nonrecyclable items into recycling bins as one problem.

He also expressed concern about inadequate public education as another shortfall. Tigchelaar told attendees that he had lived in the same Chicago area community for 20 years and “I’ve yet to see a flyer or card telling me what I can and can’t recycle.”

Mike Di Placido, a U.S.-based mill buyer for India’s Khanna Paper Inc., said in that country simply increasing the recycling rate remains the challenge at hand. Khanna has opened its 13th recycling depot there as part of its effort to increase India’s 31% paper recycling rate.

India’s paper industry and recycling sector will be the focus of sessions at the newly announced Paper Recycling Conference India event, taking place 29-30 Jan. 2015, in New Delhi. More information on that event can be found at www.RecyclingTodayEvents.com.