Recyclers Say More Tonnage Can be Recovered

The U.S. secondary paper recovery rate can move beyond 50% if recyclers are willing to try some new techniques, panelists at the Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show session agreed. The show, hosted by the Recycling Today Media Group, took place in Chicago in late June.

With the current price slump, recovering additional tonnage may not be the first issue on the minds of recyclers, session moderator Betsy Dorn, of Moore & Associates, Atlanta, noted. But putting systems in place to recover additional material during a down market means a recycler can be prepared to take in “more tonnage during the good times,” she added. “There really is a lot of tonnage still in the waste stream.”

Steve Ragiel, who heads the RecycleAmerica division of Waste Management Inc., Houston, noted that “floor pricing helps us maintain our investment” and keep the four million tons per year of paper flowing in from the residential and commercial sector it serves.

Waste Management is offering larger, commingled or single-stream carts that are collected every two weeks. “This helps drive the collection costs down and helps maintain the viability of curbside programs,” Ragiel remarked. “On the residential side, there’s clearly the potential to collect another 10% on average,” he stated.

Ragiel also stressed the need for a consistent and often repeated recycling education message to be sent to homeowners in communities, since populations are more transient than ever before.

Gina Hawkins, from the Solid Waste Division of Gainesville, Fla., noted that in her city, which includes the University of Florida, “40% of our people turn over every year,” so the need for an ongoing education program is imperative.

Hawkins described a two-bin program in that city that has helped increase curbside tonnage. The city offers one bin for recyclable containers and another for paper, and in its six-month pilot test of the two-bin program saw participation increase by 7% and recovered paper tonnage increase by 20%. (Glass, aluminum and steel can recovery rates also increased, with aluminum can recovery improving 38%.)

Bob Rickman of SP Recycling, Dublin, Ga., noted that his company is both a generator and consumer of secondary fiber, and that “SP has worked diligently to make sure that there are adequate tons available to all consumers of our grades.”

Rickman noted that drop-off centers were not becoming a thing of the past, but could still be a viable source of material. “In fact a recent R.W. Beck study concluded that community recycling via drop-off was alive, well and growing,” he remarked. “We feel that we play a few percentage points in that trend.”

Noting that increased paper recovery must be spurred by the mills and recyclers who profit from using the scrap paper, Rickman closed by saying, “I maintain there are few under-recovered tons; just tons that someone has yet to recover. These tons will never be recovered from behind a desk or [due to] a sporadic price adjustment. If our job is created by utilizing recovered fiber, then it is also to recover.”