The Container Recycling Institute (CRI), Culver City, Ca., has announced that it has begun a study of the effects of single-stream collection of residential recyclables, with a particular focus on the economic and environmental impacts of this method on the final material sent to end markets for remanufacturing.
In a press release, the CRI writes that the effects of various collection methods—source-separated curbside, commingled curbside, deposit/return—on the quality of materials recovered for recycling have not been formally researched and documented. “In fact, rarely is ‘material quality’ or the ‘end-destination’ of the material considered by government decision-makers when choosing an appropriate recycling system,” the CRI writes.
CRI ha selected Clarissa Morawski, principal of CM Consulting, Toronto, to research the issue. Morawski is an expert on extended producer responsibility (EPR) and has authored numerous reports on beverage container recovery systems.
For this study, Morawski reviewed 60 previously published studies, reports and articles in trade magazines. She found that market sensitivity to quality issues has increased as a result of the struggling economy and plunging market prices for recyclables. “End markets are really starting to quantify their economic losses from poor quality of material and, from a qualitative perspective, they feel this problem is very serious indeed and could have an impact on any future investments of capital to increase capacity of secondary feedstock,” Morawski says.
The report finds there are many negative downstream impacts of contaminated feedstock resulting from the mixing of materials through single-stream curbside collection, according to the CRI.
“Basically, the report confirms that you can’t unscramble an egg,” says CRI Executive Director Susan Collins. “Once the materials are mixed together in a single-stream recycling system, there will be cross-contamination of materials and significant glass breakage. Those cross-contamination and breakage issues then result in increased costs for the secondary processors.”
This report attempts to quantify those costs, but the study acknowledges that there is a need for more comprehensive data.
“Nor are costs calculated on an apples-to-apples basis, because the tons that are handled through various recycling systems are not necessarily the same as the tons recycled” Collins says. “If you take the contaminants out of the equation, the cost per ton recycled increases. With such high contaminant levels, some of these recycling systems are merely shifting costs to the paper mills, aluminum manufacturers, glass beneficiation facilities and glass manufacturers and plastics recyclers.”
The full report can be downloaded from the CRI Web site at www.container-recycling.org.
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