In 2018, China enacted it’s National Sword policy which banned the import of most recyclable materials to the nation’s facilities. The effect was essentially shutting down the industry’s largest market, one that handled nearly half the recyclable material around the world.
Polk County Environmental Services Administrator Jon Steiner said that has forced West Coast recyclers to look to the center of the country ruining the market Polk County has utilized. “There have been a lot of the issues with China that last four or five years since they closed the docks for a lot of the West Coast and Global recyclables due to contamination issues,” said Steiner. “That was before all the trade wars and stuff. What ended up happening is the West Coast recyclers lost their market, so they turned domestically back towards the center of the country, which is where we normally market. And when they can’t get rid of it, they are willing to get rid of their stuff cheap or even pay to get rid of stuff which ruins our market. There is an oversupply, under demand and the prices are falling to alarming levels to the point where even concerned we can’t get rid of paper.”
The pressure is being felt coast to coast as up to 70 percent of recyclable material in the country was sold to Chinese facilities. The result is that other agencies are now matching Polk County’s quality to sell domestically. “That hit some of the markets in the Twin Cities, and there are even places on the East Coast are disposing of paper for over a year now,” said Steiner. “We’ve had markets that have been pretty good because our quality has been pretty good. Now other people are bringing their quality up competing with ours, and we’re watching those prices fall. It’s an issue for us we’re going to have to keep an eye on.”
Recyclable material is starting to stack up around the state, even though agencies like Polk County prefer to sell what they’ve collected, they may soon have to start thinking of other methods of disposal if the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) changes their stance to allow that. “The MPCA doesn’t allow the disposable of recyclables without the commissioner’s permission,” said Steiner. “In twenty-some years of doing this, they’ve never given that. We’re hopefully not at that point, but we have to start talking about it now because it’s a possibility down the road. If we can’t get rid of what we’re baling and trying to market the state has made it clear they are going to require it to composted before it can be disposed of by other means. We have a compost facility. We don’t want to compost it. We cleaned and baled it to be sold, but we need to have a willing buyer at the other end.”
Environmental Services also closed a cell project for the landfill last week. The final bill on the three-acre cell was $977,801.56. The air conditioning system at the new transfer station is struggling to handle the workload when temperatures rise above 85 degrees. Steiner has informed the company that if they can’t fix the problem in short order, they will need to replace the unit.
Tags:
