This case study comes from Ben Sparks, out of our Oakland recycling location:

“Green Planet 21 is installing an auto-tie baler at a large supplier (they asked not to be named, but they make parts for Tesla so they’re very busy).  They have been using 2 cardboard compactors, 3 days/week each, for about 26 loads per month.  By baling, they will reduce their freight to 3 flatbed loads per month.  This results in a freight savings of $11,615 per month, which is almost 3 times the cost of the monthly baler lease payment.  That’s pretty good on its own, but I also calculated the reduction in CO2 emissions as it relates to their cardboard recycling program.  

To calculate CO2e, the EPA recommends a factor of 161.8 grams per ton-mile.  A loaded rolloff truck weighs 28 tons, and a loaded flatbed is 40 tons, so its not quite a straight-line calculation on 26 trips vs 3.  The round trip is 65 miles.  Once you’ve multiplied all the ton-miles per gram, you divide by 1,000,000 to convert from grams to metric tons.

I found that their current system is producing 90.45 metric tons of CO2e per year.  The new system will produce 14.91 metric tons. So by changing from compacting to baling, they’ll reduce cardboard-recycling related carbon emissions by over 75 metric tons per year. “

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Steve has worked with paper mills in China for 40 years. He is the founder and CEO of Green Planet 21. In 12 minutes you can have his thoughts on recycling and sustainability matters and the dynamics of the global marketplace today. Steve covers the National Sword, China’s new inspections and special actions, commingled recyclables, curbside recycling, and China’s anti pollution program. More can be learned from Green Planet 21 blog posts here: Blog

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Green Planet 21 is in the recycling and sustainability business. We work with our customers to maximize recyclables that they generate in their plants so that they landfill as little as possible and move towards their sustainability goals. There are many types or grades of scrap materials for cardboard and paper and plastic recycling. The useable scrap from our clients’ production processes is segregated at the source location then prepared for the global marketplace. 70% of what Green Planet 21 collects for recycling is old corrugated containers (OCC.) The OCC we sell to paper mills in the U.S. and around the world is both clean and of the highest quality. We do not ship garbage. What we collect and ship out is consistently of superior quality, the cleanest, most reliable product. Our product is such that 113 pounds of old cardboard recycles into100 pounds of new cardboard. By contrast, it takes 140 pounds of OCC gathered domestically in China to produce the same 100 pounds of paper linerboard for new corrugated boxes.

As of March 1, 2018, China, the destination for 30% of U.S. scrap exports, began requiring shipments with a prohibitive or contaminant rate of less than .05%. What does this mean? In a 2000 pound bale of recyclable OCC, there can be .05% of other material, the materials that often come attached to the cardboard, like the plastic wrap on top of a case of beverage containers.

Our used scrap cardboard is baled in 2000-2600 pound bundles prior to shipping. Less than ten pounds of that bale can include something that is not cardboard, a bit of plastic that was stuck to the cardboard, some shipping tape, a piece of plastic strapping or a scrap of baling wire that was accidentally included. It cannot include waxed cardboard, mixed paper, broken glass or anything tainted with food. Any shipments with the aroma of garbage will be rejected.

Over the past 30 years, 30% of U.S. scrap was sold to China for goods production because China has little oil and few forests, basically no raw material resources. During the 90’s the U.S. recycling industry made some errors in judging what was considered recyclable. There was a cost benefit impacting the idea of what a recyclable commodity is which included greenhouse gases and carbon offsets. Now, China’s leaders are restricting imports in order to diminish pollution in the form of byproducts from manufacturers. The Chinese government initiated Operation Green Fence (OGF) in Feb 2013 to enforce 2006 and 2010 regulations and also to implement new, stricter regulations beginning in April 2013, regulations that effectively changed the US recycling business by demanding higher quality commodities. The Chinese government has now changed the playing field again by demanding different specifications for importing recyclables to feed those mills. They have effectively incentivized the domestic collection in China while dis-incentivizing imported material. This is no longer an economic model but a political one. The most recent restrictions on imported recyclables ban several plastics and mixed waste paper, aiming to reduce contaminants and improve the environment in China.

China has modern, well designed, and efficient paper mills. For example, they have the capacity to treat the water and return it cleaner to the source than it was before they pumped it into their mill or before it is returned to a river. People knowledgeable about the paper making business and the recycling business are not driving these changes.

The Chinese government embarked on National Sword beginning in 2017 and now China is dictating product specifications. It is NOT a Capitalist free-form marketplace. It is a “Wild West” scenario that is roiling the recycling markets worldwide. Further, there is a new government policy, a ten-month program of special actions called Blue Sky being enforced by people who do not have the benefit of understanding the paper business, what is needed to make new material. Traditionally, over the past four decades, all sides negotiated the market and deals were accepted or not. The current situation is a one-sided deal that impacts how we work and our relationships with our customers in a high stakes, future-changing way.

Both our clients and the public must become knowledgeable about how the recycling markets function. In the West, Green Planet 21 has been working with large manufactures setting up and meeting sustainability goals. At Green Planet 21, we know that source separated commodities have the highest value. We continue to process and sell waste paper, an array of clean, high quality source-segregated post-industrial materials. We work with our source clients to ensure that what we ship out is high quality in the extreme.

Green Planet 21 is not involved in curbside recycling. The curbside recycling that most municipalities across the U.S. rely on produces a mixed mess that destroys the value of the recyclables. Curbside mixtures contain glass, many types of plastics, hybrid container packaging, and even food. The quality of recyclables produced is too contaminated to create a reliably clean and desirable product. The sorting and cleaning labor is not attractive to workers and the labor costs are considerable. Much of the material from curbside, single-stream collection will no longer be recycled. In the U. S., we have been underpricing disposal. Those cost will go up as we bury more in landfills and the waste companies raise landfill rates. Our collection systems will require massive refinement in order to recycle municipal wastes. Green Planet 21 is in a unique position to accommodate the changing market conditions and will continue to be a leader in recycling and sustainability.

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Dear Current and Future Customers:

Thanks so very much for your ongoing business.
We need you to be in the loop and fully understand the current situation for recyclables in China.

The Chinese government has set new standards for imports to China and their inspectors are in place as of March 1^st.
Their inspection of the recyclables received in shipping containers includes:

• 100% of ALL containers will be x-rayed for prohibitives
• 30% of ALL containers will have the doors opened for inspection and could be partially unloaded to inspect quality
• 10% of ALL containers will be opened, unloaded and spread out so that each bale can be carefully inspected
• Any rejections from any of these steps could cause immediate banishment from your and our shipping to China.

Remember – The Chinese quality decisions are based on a visual inspection, that is perception, and any rejects cannot be verified by actual sorting in China.  Prohibitives & Outthrows cannot be greater than .05% combined.

• Prohibitives are anything that is not made completely of paper
• Outthrows are paper that is not kraft or corrugated cardboard

Please  reach out to your sales person with any questions.

This is what Dianne Robinson has shared with her clients in the Seattle/Tacoma region and we wish to share it throughout the Company.

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As we collect, bale, and transport old corrugated containers (OCC), office paper, many types of packaging, wrappings, and strappings, Green Planet 21 will continue to partner with our clients to ensure that we maximize recycling and the value of scrap materials with persistent vigor. We expect that China will continue to buy our high quality, clean, post-industrial supply of cardboard and several grades of paper along with some plastics. We will handle plastic scrap types efficiently as we navigate the diminishing global plastic scrap market. You may have heard something about this about in the news.

On July 18, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) filed with the World Trade Organization (WTO), proposing to ban from import into China 24 types of plastic scrap types including PET, PE, PVC and PS, along with recovered mixed paper, textiles and vanadium slag towards the end 2017. Chinese authorities overseeing scrap trade are also revising a key regulation on scrap-trading requirements. The worldwide recycling industry is expected to contract as plastic sales to China shrink. Sellers will seek new end users, but the Chinese buying is not easily replaceable.

China has long been the largest and most important buyer of scrap cardboard, paper, plastics, metal, and other materials from the U.S. One third of the recyclables collected in the U.S. are sold to China. Plastics have accounted for over 15% of those exports in recent years. Prices for plastic scrap are now at the bottom, effectively ending the period when buying scrap was cheaper than buying virgin material. The world market for scrap recyclables is dynamic, always changing.

Last spring, the Chinese MEP inspected 1,162 companies that handle scrap imports and found that nearly two thirds of those firms had problematic practices or banned inventory. China instituted National Sword, an effort to improve the quality of their imported recyclables as well as stop the smuggling into China of already banned imports or materials contaminated with garbage or hazardous waste. The National Sword ban includes “polymers of ethylene, styrene, vinyl chloride, and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). These waste plastics can be ground and added as source material in the production of plastic products. Due to the low cost of oil, the sales prices for these scrap plastic types dropped earlier to negligible levels.

While China has been a buyer, an importer of recyclables, China’s own industries have not been collecting and repurposing recyclables. China now seems interested in building up its own materials recovery industry. Further, China has huge problems with environmental pollution. After joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) 16 years ago, China now seeks to meet the environmental protection obligations associated with membership.

The journalist Colin Staub has written a series of articles on this developing story.
See  https://resource-recycling.com for more information.

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