Western Pennsylvania wrestles with China's recycling restrictions

The wall that China has built around imported recyclable materials like some plastics and glass is hitting home, as communities around Southwestern Pennsylvania will see costs rise while fewer recyclable materials will be collected.

“It’s a national issue. This is a market-driven issue that is affecting everyone,” said Ellen Keefe, director of the nonprofit Westmoreland Cleanways and Recycling, the Unity-based environmental organization that operates a recycling center.

Penn Township residents will have to trash glass and plastics Nos. 3 through 7 rather than recycling them after Republic Services notified the municipality it no longer will accept those recyclables by Aug. 1. The market for selling those products has dried up, the company said.

The change in collecting recyclable materials already has occurred in about half or more of the local communities that contract with Republic Services, including Penn Hills, Wilkins, Shaler, Moon, Mt. Lebanon, Bethel Park, Peters Township and South Fayette, said John McGoran, Republic Service’s Western Pennsylvania manager of municipal services.

“More communities are being added everyday throughout the Pittsburgh area,” McGoran said.

More change coming

North Huntingdon will no longer require its trash hauler to collect plastics Nos. 3 through 7 or glass in a new contract that takes effect in January, township manager Jeff Silka said.

“There’s no market there (for the glass and that plastic), and they won’t be picked up. The chances are we would not get any bids” if the township requires a hauler to collect those recyclables, Silka told commissioners. Waste Management is the township’s trash hauler.

The recycling market has shunned Nos. 3 through 7 plastics because they are not as pure as Nos. 1 and 2 — which includes milk jugs, soda bottles and detergent bottles, Keefe said. Plastics have the best value when melted with those of a similar grade during the remanufacturing process, Keefe said.

Waste Management is honoring municipal contracts that require it to collect glass and mixed plastics, but the company is talking with its customers concerning removing these materials from the recycling stream, said Erika Deyarmin-Young, Waste Management public affairs coordinator for Western Pennsylvania. The hauler has removed those items from the list of materials it will accept for recycling in new contracts, Deyarmin-Young said.

The changes have not hit Greensburg, which has a few years remaining on its contract with Waste Management.

“But I’m sure there will be some changes coming either way. I just am not 100% sure what those changes will be,” city administrator Kelsye Milliron said.

In Delmont, Republic Services wants to raise customers’ bills 74 cents a month in its existing contract because of the impact China’s tougher rules on what it will accept from foreign markets. McGoran told Delmont officials that the cost of dumping the plastics and glass into a landfill will increase the company’s costs.

Shattered system

The catalyst for changing what consumers put in their recycling containers is China’s restrictions on imported plastic products. That country reduced the amount of contamination it was willing to accept from about 20% to 0.5%, Keefe said.

When the Chinese implemented the policy last year, it had immediate ramifications. Scrap plastic shipments to China in 2018 plunged 99% compared to 2017, according to Resource Recycling Inc., an industry newsletter. Chinese companies that were buying 12.6 billion pounds of scrap plastic in 2017 took only 110 million pounds last year.

“Unfortunately, the recycling processing plants have not been very successful in removing the Nos. 3 through 7 plastic from the Nos. 1 and 2 plastics they were selling to China and other plastics markets,” Keefe said.

The high level of contamination was traced back to the recycling plants not being able to process incoming material cleanly enough to meet China’s specifications, Keefe said. Shattered glass along with other recyclables are difficult to separate from paper, cardboard and other materials, she added.

“Once glass is smashed, it no longer has any value as a recyclable itself. The glass shards get ground into the other materials, degrading their recyclability as well,” Keefe said.

Another big challenge to recycling is when customers put plastic shopping bags into recycling containers rather than recycle them in bins outside supermarkets, McGoran said.

Haulers considered any recyclables in plastic bags as garbage and charge an extra fee, Silka said.

Because of those changes in the market for recyclables, Silka recommended the township bid out only mandatory residential trash and recycling. Commercial customers would be responsible for hiring their own collectors for recyclables, Silka said.

“This is going to be like tiptoeing through a minefield,” Silka said of preparing the specifications in an environment where haulers will charge an extra fee when picking up contaminated or bagged recyclables.