Originally published June 5/19 The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.
Recycling has been in the news in the past two weeks. The containers of ‘recyclables’ being returned from the Philippines and Malaysia are examples.
Friends have forwarded several news items to me. There are some interesting details in what I have read.
First of all, the problem plastics are usually film plastic like plastic bags, wrap and the number six plastics which includes Styrofoam. These are low grade plastic and rarely are recycled.
Many programs included them because they could ship them overseas. These countries have shut down the marked as they realized it is garbage and recycling programs that included these materials are stuck with them.
The other problem is garbage contamination.
We have never recycled these products and remove garbage. The companies we ship would not accept them because they did not ship overseas. Therefore we are not facing backlogs thankfully.
The good news is that the high quality #1, 2 and 5 plastics are still moving to mills in North America. Their prices have fallen which affects us indirectly by an increase in the sorting cost in Winnipeg.
China’s closure is still affecting the corrugated cardboard market which is 50% of the recyclables that we ship.
North American mills are at capacity so the Emterra and Cascades, the companies we ship to in Winnipeg are stockpiling it. Unfortunately, we have no space so must ship every two weeks.
The price had increased some over the past year. In May it dropped to from $35.00 to $14/tonne at Emterra. Cascades, is paying nothing for our bales and charging $10.00/tonne for the larger bales from local stores.
I’m told it will probably get worse before it gets better.
Recycling has been in the news in the past two weeks. The containers of ‘recyclables’ being returned from the Philippines and Malaysia are examples.
Friends have forwarded several news items to me. There are some interesting details in what I have read.
First of all, the problem plastics are usually film plastic like plastic bags, wrap and the number six plastics which includes Styrofoam. These are low grade plastic and rarely are recycled.
Many programs included them because they could ship them overseas. These countries have shut down the marked as they realized it is garbage and recycling programs that included these materials are stuck with them.
The other problem is garbage contamination.
We have never recycled these products and remove garbage. The companies we ship would not accept them because they did not ship overseas. Therefore we are not facing backlogs thankfully.
The good news is that the high quality #1, 2 and 5 plastics are still moving to mills in North America. Their prices have fallen which affects us indirectly by an increase in the sorting cost in Winnipeg.
China’s closure is still affecting the corrugated cardboard market which is 50% of the recyclables that we ship.
North American mills are at capacity so the Emterra and Cascades, the companies we ship to in Winnipeg are stockpiling it. Unfortunately, we have no space so must ship every two weeks.
The price had increased some over the past year. In May it dropped to from $35.00 to $14/tonne at Emterra. Cascades, is paying nothing for our bales and charging $10.00/tonne for the larger bales from local stores.
I’m told it will probably get worse before it gets better.
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