The New York Times has discovered the recycling crisis – nearly a month after Dead Tree Edition's "Awash in Paper" reported on it. Yesterday’s article in the Times even uses one of the same examples, the Charleston, WV area.
The article reports various instances of communities suspending or restricting their recycling programs and of recyclers storing materials rather than selling them for next to nothing. All kinds of scrap, not just paper, are affected.
The second sentence actually understates the problem, saying that the economic downturn has “decimated” the market for recyclables. Once upon a time, the Times had copy editors who knew that “decimate” means to destroy only 10% of something and who would have realized that “devastated” was more appropriate in this case.
One irony of the article is that it came out just after a minor recovery in the market for recycled paper as Chinese buyers tentatively returned to the market. For example, Pulp & Paper Week reports that the December price for mixed paper for export from New York to Asia was a whopping $0 to $5 per ton, up from -$10 to -$15 (yes, prices were negative) in November.
Speaking of ironies, here’s another from the same issue of Pulp & Paper Week: Material recovery facilities (MRFs) in Quebec are struggling and looking for relief from city-government contracts because of the crash in export prices to China. Hmm, Quebec, aren’t there a lot of paper mills there? Yes, but the newsletter reports that the MRFs take in material from single-stream recycling operations that “isn’t good enough quality for domestic paper mills.”
I don’t understand why the environmental movement has been largely asleep on single-stream recycling. Some organizations pressure major organizations to buy paper with recycled content but ignore the fact that, increasingly in North America, we are moving to single-stream recycling (glass, cans, paper, etc. in the same containers) that makes the recovered fiber virtually unuseable for high-quality paper. We have relied on shipping it to China, where labor is cheap enough to justify separating the recycled materials by hand.
Showing posts with label single-stream recycling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label single-stream recycling. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Awash in Paper
Recycled paper is starting to pile up around the world, and in some cases people are paying to have paper taken off their hands.
Scrap dealers in much of California are stockpiling paper gathered from curbside collection because they can't find a market for it, reports the Sacramento Bee. The British government may use abandoned military bases to store waste paper, according to The Times of London. The Kanawha County Solid Waste Authority in West Virginia closed its satellite recycling centers a few days ago.
Paper companies seem to have been slow to react to the global collapse of the market for recycled papers. Just yesterday, an environmental executive for a major paper manufacturer in the U.S. stated in a public presentation that there was plenty of demand for recycled paper so there was no sense up-cycling low-grade papers like newsprint to make high-quality coated paper. (See our discussions of up-cycling in "I'm an environmental idiot!" and "Talking to the Idiot".)
The price of mixed paper for export from the New York area to Asia dropped to $10 to $15 per ton in November, down from $115-120 just a year ago, Pulp & Paper Week recently reported. Much of the drop has occurred in a matter of weeks, as Chinese paper mills that were gobbling up waste paper from around the world suddenly stopped buying. The Chinese mills are idling machines because of weak paper markets and in many cases find themselves with too much waste paper. Some paper is backing up at North American ports because the Chinese companies that were supposed to buy it cannot arrange letters of credit for the shipments.
Hardest hit by the global collapse in the waste-paper market are places like California and the United Kingdom that grew accustomed to exporting their recycled paper at high prices rather than using most of it locally. Those high prices drove a 100%-recycled newsprint mill in Pomona, CA out of business 18 months ago. Once a big user like that closes down, it's hard to restart it to take advantage of lower prices for recycled fiber.
North American paper companies may face growing pressure from customers to use some of the recycled fiber rather than having it stockpiled -- or worse, landfilled. And there may be opportunities for paper mills to get their hands on cheap fiber. But it's not clear whether North America has the infrastructure (such as deinking operations) to process all of its own recycled paper.
Scrap dealers in much of California are stockpiling paper gathered from curbside collection because they can't find a market for it, reports the Sacramento Bee. The British government may use abandoned military bases to store waste paper, according to The Times of London. The Kanawha County Solid Waste Authority in West Virginia closed its satellite recycling centers a few days ago.
Paper companies seem to have been slow to react to the global collapse of the market for recycled papers. Just yesterday, an environmental executive for a major paper manufacturer in the U.S. stated in a public presentation that there was plenty of demand for recycled paper so there was no sense up-cycling low-grade papers like newsprint to make high-quality coated paper. (See our discussions of up-cycling in "I'm an environmental idiot!" and "Talking to the Idiot".)
The price of mixed paper for export from the New York area to Asia dropped to $10 to $15 per ton in November, down from $115-120 just a year ago, Pulp & Paper Week recently reported. Much of the drop has occurred in a matter of weeks, as Chinese paper mills that were gobbling up waste paper from around the world suddenly stopped buying. The Chinese mills are idling machines because of weak paper markets and in many cases find themselves with too much waste paper. Some paper is backing up at North American ports because the Chinese companies that were supposed to buy it cannot arrange letters of credit for the shipments.
Hardest hit by the global collapse in the waste-paper market are places like California and the United Kingdom that grew accustomed to exporting their recycled paper at high prices rather than using most of it locally. Those high prices drove a 100%-recycled newsprint mill in Pomona, CA out of business 18 months ago. Once a big user like that closes down, it's hard to restart it to take advantage of lower prices for recycled fiber.
North American paper companies may face growing pressure from customers to use some of the recycled fiber rather than having it stockpiled -- or worse, landfilled. And there may be opportunities for paper mills to get their hands on cheap fiber. But it's not clear whether North America has the infrastructure (such as deinking operations) to process all of its own recycled paper.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Talking to the Idiot
The response to "I'm an environmental idiot!" in comments on this site, emails to me, and LinkedIn discussions, has been largely favorable. It turns out there are other idiots, some of them major companies, and I'm compiling a list of their statements regarding recycled-content paper for a future post.
But in the interest of more than a one-sided discussion, I'll also point out some interesting criticisms. The harshest is in a post today at paperthought, which says that "the down-cycle whine is getting pretty old" and that all paper sectors must do their part to suck up recovered fiber.
Someone sent an off-line email questioning whether down-cycling wastes 20% of recycled fiber. The book-industry report I quoted on that apparently got the information from a paper company, so perhaps there is some "spin" in that statistic.
An anonymous comment on this site pointed out that the economic recession has drastically reduced China's demand for the U.S.'s waste paper. "Up-cycling may not make sense when you could use it in other down-cycle applications, but if there is [no] market for the down-cycle product, up-cycle is better than landfill," Anonymous points out.
It's true that my timing was lousy: The last couple of weeks have seen a horrendous drop in demand, and prices, for recovered fiber. Recycled paper destined for China is backing up in North American ports because of falling demand and credit problems, and there is even talk of landfilling recycled fiber now being more profitable than selling it. Assuming we won't magically see a reopening of newsprint and other low-grade mills that relied solely or mostly recycled fiber, what's the best way for buyers to influence the market so that the recovered fiber is used appropriately?
More questions: Isn't the growth of single-stream curbside recycling (where glass, cans, and paper are put into the same bins) a major factor in making much of North America's recycled fiber difficult to use in North America? If so, why aren't all of us (paper buyers, paper mills, environmentalists), battling the spread of single-stream recycling?
But in the interest of more than a one-sided discussion, I'll also point out some interesting criticisms. The harshest is in a post today at paperthought, which says that "the down-cycle whine is getting pretty old" and that all paper sectors must do their part to suck up recovered fiber.
Someone sent an off-line email questioning whether down-cycling wastes 20% of recycled fiber. The book-industry report I quoted on that apparently got the information from a paper company, so perhaps there is some "spin" in that statistic.
An anonymous comment on this site pointed out that the economic recession has drastically reduced China's demand for the U.S.'s waste paper. "Up-cycling may not make sense when you could use it in other down-cycle applications, but if there is [no] market for the down-cycle product, up-cycle is better than landfill," Anonymous points out.
It's true that my timing was lousy: The last couple of weeks have seen a horrendous drop in demand, and prices, for recovered fiber. Recycled paper destined for China is backing up in North American ports because of falling demand and credit problems, and there is even talk of landfilling recycled fiber now being more profitable than selling it. Assuming we won't magically see a reopening of newsprint and other low-grade mills that relied solely or mostly recycled fiber, what's the best way for buyers to influence the market so that the recovered fiber is used appropriately?
More questions: Isn't the growth of single-stream curbside recycling (where glass, cans, and paper are put into the same bins) a major factor in making much of North America's recycled fiber difficult to use in North America? If so, why aren't all of us (paper buyers, paper mills, environmentalists), battling the spread of single-stream recycling?
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