At the beginning of 2017, a bale of low-grade mixed plastics could fetch $20 per tonne in California, but a year later it cost $10 to dispose of it. Many cities that previously received revenue from their recycling programmes now have to pay hauliers to dispose of the material instead.
That percentage is even higher on the US West Coast – California exports two-thirds of the stuff tossed into household recycling bins.
Globally, about half the plastic intended for recycling is traded overseas, according to a recent study in Science Advances. Waste being processed at HKS, Amsterdam © Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR With China out of the market, the cost of managing the recycling programme has tripled, Leebrick says. “It has been meaningful for people in Oregon to recycle, they feel like they are doing something good for the planet – and now they are having the rug pulled out from under them.”Īfter the China ban, Rogue Disposal & Recycling started to limit the types of materials it accepts from households: no more plastics (except for milk jugs), no more glass and no more mixed paper (such as junk mail and cereal boxes). “Recycling is like a religion here,” says Laura Leebrick, head of government affairs at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in Southern Oregon. The US exported 30 per cent less plastic scrap in the first half of 2018 compared with a year prior, according to FT data, with much of the material ending up in landfill instead. In the US, many companies have had to send recycling to landfill because there is nowhere else to put it, a painful reversal after decades of growth in recycling programmes. But others are worthless, like coffee-cup lids or black plastic food trays.
“We’ve started to get a lot more of this because of all the online shopping.” Some of the materials sorted here are valuable, such as aluminium cans, steel and cardboard. “See all this paper?” he says, approaching the mound of waste and gesturing to an Amazon box. Broken glass crunches underfoot as Reed, a 20-year veteran of the industry, explains with pride that this plant, owned by local waste-management company Recology, is the most advanced of its kind on the West Coast, using lasers, magnets and air jets to process 750 tonnes each day. We are standing inside the largest recycling facility in San Francisco, which takes in household waste, sorts it and produces tidy bales of material at the end. “These get stuck in the machines, and there is no market for them.” He gives it a little wave and lets it float back down on to the heap.
“That is a problem plastic,” he says gravely. As Robert Reed examines a mountain of trash piled three storeys high, a thin white plastic bag catches his eye.
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