Why has the United States started to Burn Recyclables

According to various reports published in the American media in early 2019, it appears the United States has resorted to burning their recycling. Although it’s believed to be temporary, it’s unfortunate that this appears to be what is happening currently at dozens of recycling plants all over the country.

Americans thinking they are doing the right thing by recycling are going through the effort of separating their garbage only to have facilities betray that trust. It’s not done maliciously, sure, however it’s still a dynamic that needs to be acknowledged. The United States has always sent the majority of its recycling overseas, instead of processing it and re-manufacturing these materials domestically.

There’s traditionally nothing wrong with countries sending recycling overseas – except for it creates a reliance on other countries accepting these materials. Last year, China finally said no more to foreign waste at a time when the United States was providing China 40 percent of its paper and over 35 percent of its plastics.

It’s taking time to set up new buyers for American recycling materials. As those deals are being put together, recycling’s piling up. Perhaps making things worse, China’s withdrawal from the international recycling game has also caused prices to all. Mixed paper was valued at $32/ton roughly a year and a half ago, and is today valued at only $4.70/ton. That’s a huge plummet!

Complicating things further, by 2020, China is going to put an end to accepting all foreign recyclable materials. Aggressive criticism has mounted from stakeholders in the United States, there’s been all sorts of claims including China wanting to sacrifice international influence in favor of supporting its own internal recycling market – something which China appears to be doing better than the United States.

For all these things happening, there are many things the United States could do including dedicating themselves to creating a homegrown recycling infrastructure. Instead, they’re just burning their trash and waiting for relationships with other countries to come through. In this Trump era of ‘Buy American’, it’s disappointing to see that the United States is still having to rely on elsewhere to handle their recycling. It’s even sadder to see them burning their recyclable materials.

It’s estimated that by 2021, the United States recycling market would have recovered. Until that time, we can expect to see some recycling facilities continue to burn their materials. All of this brings up some key issues, such as why there is not more domestic recycling infrastructure in place, whether there is even a point for households to be recycling certain products at this stage, and what’s being done to ensure this sort of situation with burning recycling does not happen again in the future. There are no simple answers to these questions however as waste management consultants, we hope to eventually see the United States come around to doing better with the vast number of recycling materials they have.

For any home or business in need of waste management or recycling in Toronto or the GTA, we would love to help. We’ve helped thousands of Toronto customers turn their waste into recycling. Core Mini Bins continues to support our various local communities and Toronto-based waste management infrastructure, doing what we can to ensure recycling’s being properly handled every step of the way here in Canada. Contact a representative at Core Mini Bins today.

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