Tri-Cities Waste Paper Facility Closure Trashes Regional Recycling Efforts

SEATTLE (Waste Advantage): In January, Abingdon, VA officials announced they would only offer curbside recycling to city residents, but Matt Bolick, the town’s director of public works, said due to market conditions, the decision was made in June to terminate that as well. Bolick said there just isn’t a market for paper or plastic in the region and for Waste Management Inc., the company that handles the town’s solid waste, taking recyclables to Knoxville or Roanoke — where the closest facilities that accept paper and plastic are — is not a financially reasonable option. This has made recycling a challenge for many.

Nathan Ferguson, a resident of Glade Spring and avid recycler who used to run a small recycling operation at the Kroger in Abingdon, said he and his family still recycle, but he had to cease his operation because it took too much time. “It’s frustrating for people to go from doing something positive, to basically throwing away everything you produce — it can’t be good for the area,” Ferguson.

The market conditions that have created many of the recycling woes in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia extend beyond the region and even beyond the country, Bolick said. At the beginning of 2018, China and Hong Kong — previously one of the biggest markets for plastics and paper waste — stopped taking almost all types of recyclables, including mixed paper and mixed plastic, unless they met strict contamination standards.

Courtesy: https://www.wasteadvantage.com