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Thread: Trash, China now refusing to 'recycle' for US

  1. #1

    Trash, China now refusing to 'recycle' for US

    Whodda thunk?



    Trash wars: US drowning in its own waste, blaming China for rejecting ‘recycled commodities’

    https://www.rt.com/business/432912-u...ndfills-china/

    Hundreds of tons of waste that Americans believed they were recycling is now piling up in processing plants or being dumped into landfills, as China’s decision to stop buying garbage for environmental reasons begins to bite.
    Beijing’s 2017 decision to ban imports of 24 varieties of trash brought to light the real destination of most Western recyclables: They were shipped to Chinese factories, where they would be cleaned up and repurposed into raw materials. China bought half of all US scrap last year, and has recycled 72 percent of all the world’s plastic since 1992, according to a study in the journal Science Advances.


    All of that abruptly came to a halt when China decided to stop almost all imports of paper and plastic waste, and have set a .5 percent ceiling on contaminants in cardboard and metal waste, which most US trash processing plants have been unable to meet.

    “There is no single and, frankly, probably not even a group of countries, that can take in the volume that China used to take,” Adina Renee Adler, of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries in Washington, DC told AFP. “The biggest issue here is that China just gave very little time for the industry to transition.”

    Garbage previously shipped to China is now piling up in places like the processing plant in Elkridge, Maryland, where tons of trash arrive every day from the US capital. The District is already paying $75-a-ton for recycling, and only $46-per-ton for garbage that is being burned to generate electricity.

    “There was a time a few years ago when it was cheaper to recycle. It's just not the case anymore,” said Christopher Shorter, director of public works for Washington, DC. The city is reportedly thinking of charging residents for garbage by weight.

    Bill Caesar, head of the Houston, Texas-based waste company WCA, has warned that Americans are “going to have to start paying more for the privilege of recycling.”

    The US has very little domestic capability to process and recycle waste, having become used to literally shipping it overseas for decades. One conservative columnist pointed to the pileup as proof that recycling has been a scam all along.

    “The dirty secret of recycling is that it depended on the willingness of Third World countries to greenwash our trash so that progressives could pretend that their moral garbage was saving the planet,” Daniel Greenfield wrote in Front Page magazine on Thursday.

    Complicating matters further is the ongoing trade war between Washington and Beijing. The Trump administration has imposed tariffs on a number of Chinese imports, with China responding in kind.

    In March, the US delegation to the World Trade Organization demanded that Beijing continue buying up US waste.

    “China’s import restrictions on recycled commodities have caused a fundamental disruption in global supply chains for scrap materials, directing them away from productive reuse and toward disposal,” a US spokesperson pointed out at the WTO session in Geneva, demanding that “China immediately halt implementation and revise these measures in a manner consistent with existing international standards for trade in scrap materials.”

    Beijing responded by announcing it would stop buying 32 additional varieties of waste.



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  3. #2
    But, but... the US makes the highest quality garbage on the planet.

    Don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows

  4. #3
    The US has very little domestic capability to process and recycle waste, having become used to literally shipping it overseas for decades.
    So there are possible negative consequences to outsourcing your industries to other countries leaving no domestic capabilities?! The hell you say.

  5. #4
    Sounds like a real opportunity for California. Process garbage to produce electricity.
    #NashvilleStrong

    “I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by euphemia View Post
    Sounds like a real opportunity for California. Process garbage to produce electricity.
    Works for voters, too.
    Quote Originally Posted by Andrew Ryan
    In Washington you can see them everywhere: the Parasites and baby Stalins sucking the life out of a once-great nation.

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by specsaregood View Post
    So there are possible negative consequences to outsourcing your industries to other countries leaving no domestic capabilities?! The hell you say.
    Globalism fail, summed up neatly in two sentences.

    /thread

  8. #7
    “The dirty secret of recycling is that it depended on the willingness of Third World countries to greenwash our trash so that progressives could pretend that their moral garbage was saving the planet,” Daniel Greenfield wrote in Front Page magazine on Thursday.
    And that.

    The whole recycling shibboleth is a scam.

    Steel glass and aluminum are, IIRC, the only things that end up being a net positive in energy savings to recycle.

    All the rest is a loss, using more energy and creating more pollution, than just dumping it in landfill.

  9. #8
    I can't believe garbage doesn't have any value.
    Support Justin Amash for Congress
    Michigan Congressional District 3



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by specsaregood View Post
    So there are possible negative consequences to outsourcing your industries to other countries leaving no domestic capabilities?! The hell you say.
    Sounds like a perfect business opportunity for city dwellers..

    I'm thinking their 'recycling' needs should be handled within their own borders.

  12. #10

  13. #11


    The barrel has a rain lid and a screen lid to keep burning paper from flying off. It has a steel channel air draft to provide combustion air to the bottom of the barrel. The unit rotates on the stand to allow the ashes to be easily dumped into a wheelbarrow, or piled for later disposal.


  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by EBounding View Post
    I can't believe garbage doesn't have any value.
    Could be a business opportunity..

    Pretty funny we used to go so far to ship so much recyclables. People thought they were being green were sending ships across the ocean.. but I guess they had to get back to China some how.
    "He's talkin' to his gut like it's a person!!" -me
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  15. #13
    Who do they think they are? Where else would you put trash if not the third world?
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
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    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post
    And that.

    The whole recycling shibboleth is a scam.

    Steel glass and aluminum are, IIRC, the only things that end up being a net positive in energy savings to recycle.

    All the rest is a loss, using more energy and creating more pollution, than just dumping it in landfill.
    If it had any real value, they wouldn't charge me extra for separating it for them. (Hint: I don't.)

  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post


    The barrel has a rain lid and a screen lid to keep burning paper from flying off. It has a steel channel air draft to provide combustion air to the bottom of the barrel. The unit rotates on the stand to allow the ashes to be easily dumped into a wheelbarrow, or piled for later disposal.

    Would love to have that first barrel!

    The second barrel is for composting, not burning though. My neighbor has one he doesn't use. I have my eye on it - next time he talks about needing money for something, that baby is going in my backyard.

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by specsaregood View Post
    So there are possible negative consequences to outsourcing your industries to other countries leaving no domestic capabilities?! The hell you say.
    ^^^THIS^^^
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by specsaregood View Post
    So there are possible negative consequences to outsourcing your industries to other countries leaving no domestic capabilities?! The hell you say.
    China’s ban on scrap imports a boon to US recycling plants

    https://www.breitbart.com/news/china...ycling-plants/

    The Associated Press
    AP 18 May 2019

    ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The halt on China’s imports of wastepaper and plastic that has disrupted U.S. recycling programs has also spurred investment in American plants that process recyclables.

    U.S. paper mills are expanding capacity to take advantage of a glut of cheap scrap. Some facilities that previously exported plastic or metal to China have retooled so they can process it themselves.

    And in a twist, the investors include Chinese companies that are still interested in having access to wastepaper or flattened bottles as raw material for manufacturing.

    “It’s a very good moment for recycling in the United States,” said Neil Seldman, co-founder of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a Washington-based organization that helps cities improve recycling programs.

    China, which had long been the world’s largest destination for paper, plastic and other recyclables, phased in import restrictions in January 2018.

    Global scrap prices plummeted, prompting waste-hauling companies to pass the cost of sorting and baling recyclables on to municipalities. With no market for the wastepaper and plastic in their blue bins, some communities scaled back or suspended curbside recycling programs.

    New domestic markets offer a glimmer of hope.

    About $1 billion in investment in U.S. paper processing plants has been announced in the past six months, according to Dylan de Thomas, a vice president at The Recycling Partnership, a nonprofit organization that tracks and works with the industry.

    Hong Kong-based Nine Dragons, one of the world’s largest producers of cardboard boxes, has invested $500 million over the past year to buy and expand or restart production at paper mills in Maine, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

    In addition to making paper from wood fiber, the mills will add production lines turning more than a million tons of scrap into pulp to make boxes, said Brian Boland, vice president of government affairs and corporate initiatives for ND Paper, Nine Dragons’ U.S. affiliate.

    “The paper industry has been in contraction since the early 2000s,” Boland said. “To see this kind of change is frankly amazing. Even though it’s a Chinese-owned company, it’s creating U.S. jobs and revitalizing communities like Old Town, Maine, where the old mill was shuttered.”

    The Northeast Recycling Council said in a report last fall that 17 North American paper mills had announced increased capacity to handle recyclable paper since the Chinese cutoff.

    Another Chinese company, Global Win Wickliffe, is reopening a shuttered paper mill in Kentucky. Georgia-based Pratt Industries is constructing a mill in Wapakoneta, Ohio that will turn 425,000 tons of recycled paper per year into shipping boxes.

    Plastics also has a lot of capacity coming online, de Thomas said, noting new or expanded plants in Texas, Pennsylvania, California and North Carolina that turn recycled plastic bottles into new bottles.

    Chinese companies are investing in plastic and scrap metal recycling plants in Georgia, Indiana and North Carolina to make feedstocks for manufacturers in China, he said.

    In New Brunswick, New Jersey, the recycling company GDB International exported bales of scrap plastic film such as pallet wrap and grocery bags for years. But when China started restricting imports, company president Sunil Bagaria installed new machinery to process it into pellets he sells profitably to manufacturers of garbage bags and plastic pipe.

    He said the imports cutoff that China calls “National Sword” was a much-needed wake-up call to his industry.

    “The export of plastic scrap played a big role in facilitating recycling in our country,” Bagaria said. “The downside is that infrastructure to do our own domestic recycling didn’t develop.”

    Now that is changing, though he said far more domestic processing capacity will be needed as a growing number of countries restrict scrap imports.

    “Ultimately, sooner or later, the society that produces plastic scrap will become responsible for recycling it,” he said.

    It has also yet to be seen whether the new plants coming on line can quickly fix the problems for municipal recycling programs that relied heavily on sales to China to get rid of piles of scrap.

    “Chinese companies are investing in mills, but until we see what the demand is going to be at those mills, we’re stuck in this rut,” said Ben Harvey, whose company in Westborough, Massachusetts, collects trash and recyclables for about 30 communities.

    He had a parking lot filled with stockpiled paper a year ago after China closed its doors, but eventually found buyers in India, Korea and Indonesia.

    Keith Ristau, CEO of Far West Recycling in Portland, Oregon, said most of the recyclable plastic his company collects used to go to China. Now most goes to processors in Canada or California.

    To meet their standards, Far West invested in better equipment and more workers at its material recovery facility to reduce contamination.

    In Sarepta, Louisiana, IntegriCo Composites is turning bales of hard-to-recycle mixed plastics into railroad ties. It expanded operations in 2017 with funding from New York-based Closed Loop Partners.

    “As investors in domestic recycling and circular economy infrastructure in the U.S., we see what China has decided to do as very positive,” said Closed Loop founder Ron Gonen.
    Another mark of a tyrant is that he likes foreigners better than citizens, and lives with them and invites them to his table; for the one are enemies, but the Others enter into no rivalry with him. - Aristotle's Politics Book 5 Part 11

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post
    China’s ban on scrap imports a boon to US recycling plants

    https://www.breitbart.com/news/china...ycling-plants/

    The Associated Press
    AP 18 May 2019

    ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The halt on China’s imports of wastepaper and plastic that has disrupted U.S. recycling programs has also spurred investment in American plants that process recyclables.

    U.S. paper mills are expanding capacity to take advantage of a glut of cheap scrap. Some facilities that previously exported plastic or metal to China have retooled so they can process it themselves.

    And in a twist, the investors include Chinese companies that are still interested in having access to wastepaper or flattened bottles as raw material for manufacturing.

    “It’s a very good moment for recycling in the United States,” said Neil Seldman, co-founder of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a Washington-based organization that helps cities improve recycling programs.

    China, which had long been the world’s largest destination for paper, plastic and other recyclables, phased in import restrictions in January 2018.

    Global scrap prices plummeted, prompting waste-hauling companies to pass the cost of sorting and baling recyclables on to municipalities. With no market for the wastepaper and plastic in their blue bins, some communities scaled back or suspended curbside recycling programs.

    New domestic markets offer a glimmer of hope.

    About $1 billion in investment in U.S. paper processing plants has been announced in the past six months, according to Dylan de Thomas, a vice president at The Recycling Partnership, a nonprofit organization that tracks and works with the industry.

    Hong Kong-based Nine Dragons, one of the world’s largest producers of cardboard boxes, has invested $500 million over the past year to buy and expand or restart production at paper mills in Maine, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

    In addition to making paper from wood fiber, the mills will add production lines turning more than a million tons of scrap into pulp to make boxes, said Brian Boland, vice president of government affairs and corporate initiatives for ND Paper, Nine Dragons’ U.S. affiliate.

    “The paper industry has been in contraction since the early 2000s,” Boland said. “To see this kind of change is frankly amazing. Even though it’s a Chinese-owned company, it’s creating U.S. jobs and revitalizing communities like Old Town, Maine, where the old mill was shuttered.”

    The Northeast Recycling Council said in a report last fall that 17 North American paper mills had announced increased capacity to handle recyclable paper since the Chinese cutoff.

    Another Chinese company, Global Win Wickliffe, is reopening a shuttered paper mill in Kentucky. Georgia-based Pratt Industries is constructing a mill in Wapakoneta, Ohio that will turn 425,000 tons of recycled paper per year into shipping boxes.

    Plastics also has a lot of capacity coming online, de Thomas said, noting new or expanded plants in Texas, Pennsylvania, California and North Carolina that turn recycled plastic bottles into new bottles.

    Chinese companies are investing in plastic and scrap metal recycling plants in Georgia, Indiana and North Carolina to make feedstocks for manufacturers in China, he said.

    In New Brunswick, New Jersey, the recycling company GDB International exported bales of scrap plastic film such as pallet wrap and grocery bags for years. But when China started restricting imports, company president Sunil Bagaria installed new machinery to process it into pellets he sells profitably to manufacturers of garbage bags and plastic pipe.

    He said the imports cutoff that China calls “National Sword” was a much-needed wake-up call to his industry.

    “The export of plastic scrap played a big role in facilitating recycling in our country,” Bagaria said. “The downside is that infrastructure to do our own domestic recycling didn’t develop.”

    Now that is changing, though he said far more domestic processing capacity will be needed as a growing number of countries restrict scrap imports.

    “Ultimately, sooner or later, the society that produces plastic scrap will become responsible for recycling it,” he said.

    It has also yet to be seen whether the new plants coming on line can quickly fix the problems for municipal recycling programs that relied heavily on sales to China to get rid of piles of scrap.

    “Chinese companies are investing in mills, but until we see what the demand is going to be at those mills, we’re stuck in this rut,” said Ben Harvey, whose company in Westborough, Massachusetts, collects trash and recyclables for about 30 communities.

    He had a parking lot filled with stockpiled paper a year ago after China closed its doors, but eventually found buyers in India, Korea and Indonesia.

    Keith Ristau, CEO of Far West Recycling in Portland, Oregon, said most of the recyclable plastic his company collects used to go to China. Now most goes to processors in Canada or California.

    To meet their standards, Far West invested in better equipment and more workers at its material recovery facility to reduce contamination.

    In Sarepta, Louisiana, IntegriCo Composites is turning bales of hard-to-recycle mixed plastics into railroad ties. It expanded operations in 2017 with funding from New York-based Closed Loop Partners.

    “As investors in domestic recycling and circular economy infrastructure in the U.S., we see what China has decided to do as very positive,” said Closed Loop founder Ron Gonen.
    Even if some of the companies are Chinese it is having the infrastructure here that counts, when China collapses the plants can be bought by American companies.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Even if some of the companies are Chinese it is having the infrastructure here that counts, when China collapses the plants can be bought by American companies.
    Don't delude yourself.

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by tod evans View Post
    Don't delude yourself.
    I'm not:

    Charting China's Imminent Implosion

    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  24. #21
    Recycling is a scam. If it wasn't, I'd be paid for my recyclable trash, not the other way around. These companies retooling to process the recyclable trash are only doing so to keep getting government money.

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by dannno View Post
    Could be a business opportunity..

    Pretty funny we used to go so far to ship so much recyclables. People thought they were being green were sending ships across the ocean.. but I guess they had to get back to China some how.
    I contacted the CA State Board Re: recycling opportunity, They asked me where I was located, and I replied back. Haven't heard a word from them since.

    We're being governed ruled by a geriatric Alzheimer patient/puppet whose strings are being pulled by an elitist oligarchy who believe they can manage the world... imagine the utter maniacal, sociopathic hubris!

  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Pauls' Revere View Post
    I contacted the CA State Board Re: recycling opportunity, They asked me where I was located, and I replied back. Haven't heard a word from them since.
    Lol... I couldn't even get a call back from them when I lived there doing business in recycling with a license. There is not one agency in Ca who is there to "help" you, they all exist to "obstruct" you in every way possible. I don't see how they can function at all.



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