We use cookies to make your experience better. To comply with the new e-Privacy directive, we need to ask for your consent to set the cookies. Learn more.
National Sword
The U.S. Recycling Export Challenge: Building a New Recycling Infrastructure
Since its inception, the modern global recycling industry has developed a worldwide infrastructure. In the U.S., recyclables are separated out at material recovery facilities (MRFs), packed into bales, and sent to other nations, which house the world’s processing capacity. More often than not, until recently, that meant China.
China's Import Ban on Plastics: 3 Takeaways from the "Science Advances" Study
China's import ban is rewriting the rules of the global post-consumer-plastics market. Most of us in the recycling community are still trying to figure out how to react. Until recently, however, projections based on hard data were difficult to come by.
Why Clean Recycling Is More Important Than Ever
Clean recycling is a catch-all term that describes high-quality, uncontaminated bales of post-consumer plastics, metals, or paper. It's also the key to keeping the recycling industry healthy, especially the plastics market.
Improve Municipal Plastic Recycling Programs with These Free Resources
The global recycling market is changing rapidly, and that can leave municipal plastic recycling programs struggling to find enough end users to stay in business. More than ever, post-consumer plastics are competing with virgin resins. This, in turn, is placing new pressures on materials recovery facilities (MRF) and the municipalities that hire them to produce pristine bales of reclaimed plastics; high levels of contamination are no longer acceptable.
China's National Sword and Recycling Import Ban: Responding to Market Changes
China's changing national policy on raw recycling imports is creating serious new challenges in the U.S. recyclables market. Bales of paper and plastic scrap, which would typically already be on ships bound to China's many recycling processors, are now building up in stockpiles across the United States. Materials recovery facilities (MRFs) are on a desperate hunt for new end users.