Transmat World: The U.S. Must Recycle Recycling

Looking in recycling bins around my neighborhood, I see stuff that shouldn’t be there. It’s single stream recycling, everything in one bin. And I mean everything. Cardboard contaminated with grease or lots of plastic tape, plastic that’s not recyclable, general trash, styrofoam, envelopes with the little plastic windows. it’s a mess. This is a nice neighborhood. Houses are going for $650,000 to $1,400,000. No, I am not wealthy. My house is a teardown. It will be the lot for one of these McMansions. I know it’s profiling, but I assumed people here would know how to recycle, but they don’t. They are, apparently, just like the millions of other people in the U.S. that feel good about recycling, but the Chinese think their recycling stinks because … well, it does. Too much of it was garbage and winding up in Chinese landfills and incinerators instead of being recycled, so the Chinese government put a stop to it with the 2017 passage of the National Sword policy.

Now, I know that you do recycling correctly. I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about all those other people out there that put plastic grocery bags, shower curtains, or garden hose in the recycling bin. Also, there should be no shredded paper, clothing, scrap metal, needles or medical waste, bubble wrap, aluminum foil, drinking glasses, non-recyclable plastics, hazardous waste, dirty diapers, liquids, frozen food containers (polymer film on the cardboard), and no caps or lids on glass bottles or jars.

The problem has been going on a long time, and China isn’t the only nation being persnickety about what winds up on their shores, and America isn’t the only perp. Six years ago, Canada sent 103 shipping containers to the Philippines containing recyclable plastic. Inspectors there determined it to be regular household garbage. Philippine President Duterte is livid and threatens to declare war on Canada if they don’t take it back.

There are great benefits to recycling. It reduces the amount of waste going to landfills and incinerators. It conserves natural resources such as water, metals, minerals, and timber. It saves energy. It helps create jobs. Besides, it just feels right, like you’re doing something to save the world. Don’t get carried away. It’s going to take more than recycling to defeat climate change, like voting for someone that gives a shit.

I think recycling went wrong with the advent of single stream recycling. Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) are semi-automatic, sorters using a lot of clever gadgets and software to sort single stream recycling. They are good but not that good. Plus, they cost a lot of money; and they still need people to keep watch and help out when the fans, magnets, eddy currents, and optical sorters miss something. Even with all those gizmos and people to sort trash, what comes out of a MFR is still dirtier than what recycling used to be. Once upon a time, the recycling center could count on the stuff it received to be as advertised. Everything was separated out. A quick glance could determine cleanliness or lack thereof. It was a much cheaper way to recycle but required more thought and time from the recyclables producer.

The first material recovery facility was Resource Recovery Systems in Branford, Connecticut in the 70s. The idea spread, apparently because it was thought to be a positive in selling recycling to the American public. Convenience, convenience, convenience. When China started taking in recyclables thirty years ago, MRFs served us well in getting all that stuff into cargo containers headed somewhere else besides American incinerators and landfills. There were plenty of empty cargo containers from all the consumer goods China was shipping to the U.S. At the same time, however, shipping plastic recycling to China put the quietus on good ole U.S. of A. recycling centers where this stuff could be turned back into usable plastic.

Sounds like a great opportunity for a young, smart startup team. If China won’t do it, by golly, we will. There’s another problem. The price for recycled plastic as a commodity has gone from a peak of about $300 per ton to “… costing more to collect, process, (and) ultimately produce recycled materials today than they’re worth.” That’s from Peter Keller, a vice president of Republic Services.

The Chinese won’t take it, and the price for it is in the crapper. Municipalities with recycling programs are really in a pickle. All over the nation, they are pretending to pick up recycling, but it is being diverted to landfills or incinerators. It’s going on right here in Houston. Home owners all over the city have video footage of trucks picking up both trash and recycling. They are very upset that their recycling is going the same place as the garbage. I don’t blame them. Some people spend a lot of time washing out containers, taking tape off of cardboard, etc. The mayor claims the “sanitation engineer” made an error, but I don’t think he’s telling the whole story. The order to send recyclables to the landfill comes from the top. There’s nothing else they can do with it. The recycling centers were just fronts for shipping this stuff to China. They don’t have the facilities to actually turn it back into useful material that domestic industries will buy.

So, now what do we do? For one thing, we should cut down on the use of throw-away plastic in our lives. It will be difficult. Carry your own utensils? Stainless steel personal straws (telescoping to fit in your pocket)?

If companies are going to ship their products, they should come up with something better than plastic for shipping padding. Take a lightweight metal screen, shape it around a product, leaving screen around the product the size of the shipping box. Swish that screen through a vat of paper fiber in one direction, let it dry, and pop it out—a custom made paper mache packing insert for the product. It’s effective and recyclable. If companies that rely on shipping did this, it would do away with megatons of plastic that is not ordinarily recyclable.

We should also consider taking sorting to the next step for plastics. Separate each plastic by number in its own bin and make sure it’s clean. Also, have municipalities pay the consumer for the recycled material. It doesn’t have to be much. Make it a $5 monthly rebate on the trash pickup or water bill for some minimum of material collected.

With clean, presorted plastic as feedstock, the government could then provide low cost loans as an incentive to restart American recycling centers. If we can get plastic recycling to where it’s not losing that much money, it will be in good shape the next time oil prices head skyward. Then we can bask in the glow of non-stinky recyclables and tell the Chinese “no” you can’t have them, even if they ask nicely.