Napa is raising the rate at which it keeps waste out of the landfill. But like other cities in California, it faces a tougher time finding a high enough price for the recyclables it collects – especially plastic bottles.
City revenue from material sales has fallen by more than a million dollars in two years, from $5.85 million in the 2012-13 fiscal year to $4.82 million in 2014-15. Helping to drive that decline are flagging revenue from the salvage of aluminum cans and plastic bottles, the ubiquitous drink containers made in the billions each year for California alone.
But while the rate and profitability of recycling has dropped in recent years – leading to more containers in landfills and the closure of hundreds of redemption centers – directors of Napa’s recycling program say their effort has withstood the storm better than most, mainly because the service remains as close as the customer’s doorstep.
“To the extent that prices drop, people rely more on curbside programs,” said Kevin Miller, recycling manager for the city of Napa. “The question is, do you bother to redeem the value of bottles and cans yourself? The less opportunity there is, the less convenience there is. People who are environmentally conscious will put them into curbside programs.”
Crashing prices for aluminum, paper, scrap metal and especially crude oil have rocked a recycling industry caught between competition from virgin materials on the one hand and a slowing economy in China – a voracious raw-material consumer – on the other.
With crude oil costs dropping from more than $100 a barrel two years ago to $50 today, numerous plastic recycling operations have shut down, unable to compete on price with the freshly made material or to deal with the state-required minimum payouts they must give consumers for turning in scrap.
In the span of a year, the price that Waste Management, the nation’s largest trash-hauling firm, commanded for a bale of recycled bottle-grade plastic collapsed from $230 to $112, according to the New York Times. Scrap prices have plunged since 2014, with aluminum cans dropping 28 percent and plastic bottles 44 percent, Bloomberg Businessweek reported last week, citing data from Resource Recycling Systems.
In January, RePlanet, California’s largest bottle redeemer, closed 191 of its 541 recycling centers, citing the price crashes for plastic and aluminum as well as rising employee costs. (The firm continues to run a branch on Jackson Street in Napa.) Statewide, the number of redemption outlets has fallen by nearly 700 since 2011, to 1,728, said Mark Oldfield, spokesman for the state CalRecycle agency.
To read the full story, visit http://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/commodity-price-drops-hit-recycling-revenue-but-napa-program-endures/article_76cdd141-8111-50dd-9d37-80d90fdff921.html.