Recycling Facilities Fight Contamination in the Face of New Import Policies

SEATTLE (Waste 360): With China’s National Sword policy increasing the standard for contamination in plastic waste imports, recycling facilities across the country are working to clean up their end products or find new buyers. Such a task is more difficult than it may seem, however.

About 20 percent of the material that comes to the Waste Management recycling sorting facility in Denver is trash. Now, the sorting process is all the more important.

When China stopped accepting recycling on the grounds that it was not sorted cleanly enough, it raised the bar across the industry. Domestic buyers now want to be sure that when they’re buying glass, for example, it’s only glass.

There’s also a basic supply-and-demand issue with the mixed paper and plastics that China is no longer accepting. Now, with so much material on the market, prices have dropped; sometimes the cost of transporting material to the buyer is more than the sale price.

Courtesy: https://waste360.com