China’s open-door policy on U.S. recycled material ended with the new year, but Franklin County recycles on.
The new ban on an estimated 40,000 shipping containers a day from the United States filled with recyclable plastic, paper and aluminum has already led to a backlog of recyclables at transfer facilities around the nation, but the state’s Materials Recycling Facility in Springfield — where Franklin County waste is shipped — sees no problem in nearly all its markets.
That reality — because of the strict waste separation policies at the oldest of the state’s eight MRFs — means that Franklin County’s collection is likely to continue despite a new Chinese policy banning 24 types of solid waste, including various plastics and unsorted mixed papers. China, which has been receiving 55 percent of the world’s scrap paper and has been the destination for 40 percent of its plastic recycling, notified the World Trade Organization in July that it would no longer act as the world’s trash dump.
That’s caused stockpiled collections of recycled materials around this country and sending waste and recycling firms scrambling for buyers for the materials they collect for reuse, due to plunging prices.
Unlike the state’s seven other MRFs, the Springfield operation is a dual-stream facility, meaning that mixed paper is recycled separately from recycled plastics and glass, explained Jan Ameen, executive director of the 22-town Franklin County Solid Waste Management District. As a result, only 2 to 3 percent of the recycled material received by the facility, operated by Waste Management Inc., is contaminated with unacceptable trash or other waste, compared to contamination rates that she guessed are as high as 15 percent in other parts of the state. The contamination is one of the issues behind China’s move.
To encourage more recycling, most of the state and the country has gone to “single-streaming,” where recycled materials are left to be separated at the facility.
“In my professional opinion, that creates a really big pile of mess,” said Ameen. “A lot of companies in the United States are scrambling because they’ve just been making this inferior product for years. Theoretically, it’s been sorted, but as you can imagine, it’s impossible. The industry got away with it. But to me, it’s like you made your bed, and now you’re dealing with it.”
A lot of recycling advocates have argued, “If we make it so easy, even lazy people will recycle, and we’ll get more recycling,” she says. “What we’ve found is we get more recyclables, but we also get more trash, because then people think, ‘I can put everything in there.’ They don’t have to think anymore.”
The Solid Waste District, with an overall 35 percent recycling average, and some towns, like Leverett, recycling as much as 50 percent of its waste, was responsible for 1,417 tons of paper and 953 tons of glass, plastic and aluminum in the first 11 months of 2017. Greenfield, which is not a member of the district, collected 909 tons of paper and 529 tons of plastic, glass and aluminum for all of 2017.
Monroe, which is part of the Berkshire Solid Waste District, is the only Franklin County town not served by the Springfield MRF, Ameen said.
“My sense is that we’re OK,” said Ameen. The district’s 22 towns, she added, “have been adamant. They stayed in dual-stream system, when rest of country’s shifted, and they’re getting their reward. Those materials can be marketed domestically.”
“We sell to domestic buyers, so we’re not affected by the China ban,” said Michael Moores, who manages the Springfield MRF, a plant that recycles about 2 million pounds of material a month.
If there is an impact of the China ban in western Massachusetts, it’s in places like Shelburne, Charlemont, Whately and Leverett, which have been also collecting “bulky” plastics — including toys, lawn furniture, laundry baskets and 5-gallon pails — which China has also turned away from. The Springfield facility was collecting maybe 15 to 20 tons a month of those rigid plastics, said Moores, but stopped accepting them two months ago. Leverett and Whately are still accepting those materials, according to Ameen, whereas Shelburne and Charlemont have suspended their collection, waiting to see if the market for those plastics returns.