Contamination is the bane of recycling efforts and it’s the reason China and some other countries began rejecting bales of recycling materials from the United States if it contained excessive amounts of other materials. That led to a crisis in recycling over the past year.
As the recycling industry sought out new markets to process the materials, prices plummeted because of oversupply, and that made it more desirable for some places to simply dump recycling materials in landfills or figure out new solutions such as converting the materials into energy by burning them.
In the South Bend area, the situation hasn’t been quite so dire because most of the recyclables here are sold to companies in the Midwest rather than China. “We have been affected,” said Chris Himes, vice president of Recycling Works. “When China stepped out of the market, prices fell because other markets were being saturated.”
At one point, the company — which also operates Borden, Himco and Integra Document Destruction — was forced to warehouse some of its materials, hoping for the market to eventually improve. None of its sorted bales of recycling materials, however, were landfilled, he said. “This year, the markets are better but they’re still depressed,” Himes said, while giving a tour of the recycling operation. “We’re fortunate because we have less exposure to the export markets. Most of our markets are in the Midwest.”
Allyson Mitchell, executive director of the Indiana Recycling Coalition, said Indiana’s strong manufacturing sector is the reason markets are better here for recycled plastic, aluminum, cardboard, paper, steel and other materials. “We have the end markets so we’ve been somewhat insulated from China’s restrictions,” said Mitchell. “But it killed the global commodity market.”
Metropolitan areas that were used to sending products to China and other countries in empty cargo ships sought out the same markets being used by Indiana recycling firms, further depressing prices. “They were dependent on China and other countries,” Mitchell said. “They didn’t have the end markets and the processors like we do.”
And the added shipping costs of moving recyclables to Midwest processors didn’t help the situation for coastal cities, she said. Though some felt the downturn was a “doomsday scenario” that could result in the death of recycling, Mitchell and Himes said they believe the market will continue to recover.
Throughout most of St. Joseph County, Borden — a sister company of Recycling Works — collected about 27.9 million pounds of recyclables through its curbside program, which includes most of the county with the exception of Mishawaka and some smaller towns, said Randy Przybysz, director of the county’s Solid Waste Management District.
Because of the depressed state of the market, Borden’s curbside customers in the county are paying a bit more for the service in 2019 and it could keep going up by as much as 5 percent each year over the life of the contract. “I can’t see it ever going down,” Przybysz said.
Facing similar problems, Republic is asking to meet with Mishawaka to determine if something can be done to help it through the recycling downturn, said Tim Ryan, director of the city’s Central Services Division. Because China and other markets are rejecting bales of recycled materials for contamination, much of the problem would be solved with cleaner bales, according to experts.
Of the 27.9 million pounds collected in St. Joseph County by Borden, for example, about 4.4 million pounds was deemed trash that never should have been placed in recycling containers to begin with, Przybysz said.