Plastics Recycling 2018: Beyond the ban

Pictured above, from left: Dylan de Thomas, Brent Bell, Pablo Leon and Hamilton Wen

Postconsumer plastic scrap has been a primary target of the import bans China has introduced this year. Additionally, import licenses for plastic scrap have been harder to come by, while import quotas have been reduced.

Panelists during the second plenary session, China’s Impact – The Ban and Beyond, during Plastics Recycling 2018 discussed the impact of China’s actions on the plastics recycling industry. The event, organized by Resource Recycling, was Feb. 19-21 in Nashville, Tennessee.

“China is completely off the table,” said Hamilton Wen, director of California-based Newport CH International’s plastics division. As a result, the company’s plastics brokerage business has experienced a “complete upheaval,” he added.

While Newport CH is looking at other markets worldwide, sales come down to quality, he said. “It is no longer a seller’s market. Now it is who has the best material.”

Pablo Leon, Asia manager for the Spanish company Fosimpe SL, with operations in Shanghai, said China’s actions should not have come as a surprise. “The bans have been rumored for some time.”

However, Leon added that he believed that China has gone too far with its actions.

Brent Bell, vice president of recycling for Waste Management, Houston, said that 30 percent of the tons the company processes are exported, with the primary destination historically having been China.

In response to China’s actions, the company has developed alternative markets in India, Southeast Asia and even the U.S. for the nearly 30 percent of its tonnage that was previously shipped primarily to China, he said.

Wen said Southeast Asia offered a tenuous alternative to shipping to China, however, citing problems at the ports in the region related to the “sheer amount of volume” being shipped. Additionally, he said he felt it was only a matter of time before these countries started to enact laws and procedures similar to those China has adopted.

Dylan de Thomas, vice president of industry collaboration with The Recycling Partnership, Falls Church, Virginia, agreed, saying, “Other countries are looking to China for what they want to do in the future.”

He added,” I’m bullish on domestic capacity, personally.”

De Thomas and Bell agreed that educating residents on what is and is not acceptable for recycling is an important factor, as it affects the degree of inbound material contamination material recovery facilities (MRFs) experience. 

Bell said contamination rates of 0.5 percent, as China has specified for incoming plastic scrap shipments, will be difficult to achieve with 15 percent inbound contamination rates at MRFs.

Reducing contamination at the MRF hinges on resident education, which Bell said was a “hard exercise to go through” and that there are no “silver bullets” that can apply in all situations.

As a MRF operator, Bell said, it is important for WM to talk with the communities it serves to see if they still want their recycling programs to include recyclables that may have limited demand and value.

The changes in China’s policies toward imported scrap have created real challenges for municipal programs, de Thomas said, with communities re-evaluating the materials their recycling programs accept. 

While he said improving quality was a “big part” of the answer to the questions posed by China’s recent actions, demand for recycled plastics also must increase.

Bell agreed, saying, “We need demand to exist to make the recycling system work.”

To that end, WM is talking with companies about including recycled content in their products, he said.

While Bell said he supports China’s effort to clean up its environment and have the material quality the country’s consuming companies deserve, he would have liked to have seen a longer time frame for implementation of the government’s changes to import policies.

Leon said he felt the Chinese government “may have gone too far,” adding that “all the plastics they were receiving were not junk.”

“There will be markets for low-grade plastics,” Wen said. “They will take time to develop.”

He continued, “This material has value. It will get recycled somewhere.”