Why Canada’s recycling industry is in crisis mode

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Interesting Globe article on recycling in Canada and elsewhere. I’d read about the problems Calgary has been having but had no idea it was this widespread.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/cana...n-crisis-mode/

Desperation had set in. For more than a year, officials in Calgary’s department of waste and recycling services had been unable to find a buyer for truckloads of used plastic.

Recyclers in Canada had balked. And shipping the unwanted material overseas was no longer an option. By March, the officials appealed to Sims Municipal Recycling in Brooklyn, N.Y. – a last-ditch bid to clear a backlog of hard-to-recycle packaging that had swelled to 1,400 tonnes, the equivalent of seven blue whales, stranded, in this case, in trailers at a local landfill.

The extended holding pattern the scrap was forced to endure is a symptom of a much wider emergency engulfing the global recycling industry. It followed on China’s decision, one year ago, to ban the import of 24 types of recyclable commodities. The hard-line new policy, dubbed National Sword, was a response to environmental and health concerns, and also to the “contaminated” state in which recyclables arrived: often in filthy condition, and with random materials lumped into single bales.

Almost overnight, a thriving global trade in recyclable scrap dried up.

In 2016, around half of all plastic waste intended for recycling was traded internationally, according to a 2018 study published in the journal Science Advances. China and Hong Kong alone imported US$81-billion worth of scrap plastic between 1988 and 2016, the authors said.

But there was a hitch. Bales of used cardboard were frequently so soiled with grease and food waste that they were effectively garbage. And not all plastic was equally recyclable, either, owing to its complex chemistry and other factors. For instance, labels and adhesives used on certain plastics – clamshells that hold berries are a prime offender – can yield a lower-quality resin that makes them harder to convert into new products.

China was “importing all this material, hand-sorting it, and then just burning what wasn’t valuable to them,” says Lorenzo Donini, a senior executive at waste hauler GFL Environmental Services in Edmonton. “It was a charade.”

[Scorch]

I usually cringe when I see people throw out their pizza boxes in the paper/cardboard bins

They can’t recycle your greasy, 48 hour old cheese strands and random toppings food containers with other paper

[getbak]

Originally Posted by Scorch

I usually cringe when I see people throw out their pizza boxes in the paper/cardboard bins

They can’t recycle your greasy, 48 hour old cheese strands and random toppings food containers with other paper

Except, they tell you to do exactly that: https://www.calgary.ca/UEP/WRS/Pages...zza-boxes.aspx

[zamler]

Originally Posted by getbak

Except, they tell you to do exactly that: https://www.calgary.ca/UEP/WRS/Pages...zza-boxes.aspx

He's talking about the blue bin.

Soooooooo....the problem is ####ing PACKAGING. Stop making it impossible to recycle and making it 40 times larger than necessary. Also plastic beverage containers should be illegal, replace them. You're telling me with all the tech we have there is no replacement for a plastic bottle that never biodegrades?

[getbak]

Originally Posted by zamler

He's talking about the blue bin.

Yeah...

Clean pizza boxes

Recycle empty pizza boxes (some grease is ok):

• In your blue cart
• At a community recycling depot

[Looch City]

All my pizza boxes go in the blue bin...

[White Out 403]

I put my pizza and extra slices in the blue bin. Coffee filters down the toilet.

[OldDutch]

The fraud of recycling is catching up to us. No longer is it easy to dump stuff in one bin feeling all altruistic, only to have it shipped to China then to Bangladesh and put in a landfill.

Its sad but true. China had enough taking our garbage and we are in crisis, but hey felt good while it lasted.

[calgarygeologist]

I honestly think it is time to start loading our garbage/recyclables onto large rockets and firing the stuff into deep space where it won't be a problem. Let the aliens deal with it.

[GGG]

Single stream recycling has always been a terrible idea. Glad to see it becoming more widely known.

Landfilling where there is no market for the product is a very efficient method of disposal despite it not breaking down. A lack of space for landfills is not a humanitarian crisis.

I only recycle aluminum cans and glass bottles

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by OldDutch

The fraud of recycling is catching up to us. No longer is it easy to dump stuff in one bin feeling all altruistic, only to have it shipped to China then to Bangladesh and put in a landfill.

Its sad but true. China had enough taking our garbage and we are in crisis, but hey felt good while it lasted.

I think “the fraud of recycling” is a little dramatic. If what you take away from this is that recycling is a fraud, you’ve fallen off the rocker.

People just need to be more aware of what is and isn’t recyclable. Takes a bit of common sense, a tiny bit of effort, but that’s it.

Who is recycling to feel good about themselves? I can’t imagine throwing some paper in the blue bin or food in the green bin and thinking, “#### yeah, Captain Planet right here, I’m a great person!” ...it’s just where stuff goes...

[Northendzone]

i am no expert, but i would assume that a big part of the issue is likely cost. if you were a bottler and a bio bottle cost say $0.10 more and made your shelf price higher then i'd imagine most bottlers would opt for the least cost alternative.

i agree that many items seem overpackaged, and in some cases you need to almost destroy the package to get the item. I hate when I do that and then wind up returning the item.

my other comment is how the labels of some items are very hard to get off to properly recycle the item.

Originally Posted by zamler

Soooooooo....the problem is ####ing PACKAGING. Stop making it impossible to recycle and making it 40 times larger than necessary. Also plastic beverage containers should be illegal, replace them. You're telling me with all the tech we have there is no replacement for a plastic bottle that never biodegrades?

[AltaGuy]

Can Alberta start being paid to accept all of the rest of Canada's recyclables, and maybe some of the US's, and use some of the oilsands lands to create giant processing facilities and landfills? Seems the science would be lucrative.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by zamler

He's talking about the blue bin.

Soooooooo....the problem is ####ing PACKAGING. Stop making it impossible to recycle and making it 40 times larger than necessary. Also plastic beverage containers should be illegal, replace them. You're telling me with all the tech we have there is no replacement for a plastic bottle that never biodegrades?

I don't think it's plastic beverage bottles that are the problem. It's other plastic packaging, such as plastic clamshells for veggies and fruit. But even those aren't really the problem, it's the little tape pieces that they use that end up contaminating the plastic.

All paper products should just end up in the green bin.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

I honestly think it is time to start loading our garbage/recyclables onto large rockets and firing the stuff into deep space where it won't be a problem. Let the aliens deal with it.

We tried that, it landed in the Philippines.

[puckedoff]

Consumers complain about excess packaging but are not prepared to pay the additional cost associated with expensive packaging, additional damaged product and more costly shipping practices.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I think “the fraud of recycling” is a little dramatic. If what you take away from this is that recycling is a fraud, you’ve fallen off the rocker.

People just need to be more aware of what is and isn’t recyclable. Takes a bit of common sense, a tiny bit of effort, but that’s it.

Who is recycling to feel good about themselves? I can’t imagine throwing some paper in the blue bin or food in the green bin and thinking, “#### yeah, Captain Planet right here, I’m a great person!” ...it’s just where stuff goes...

Contamination isn't the only problem.

There just isn't a market for the amount of low grade plastic anymore or low grade paper. We forgot about Reduce and Reuse and put a health halo around recycling.

Contamination is a problem with cardboard which would be recycled into other products but contamination isn't the only issue. Lack of market demand is the main one.

People certainly think themselves to be captain planet. Go for a week not recycling anything and see how many people will tell you that you can recycle that. LEED certification which buildings use to create halo affects around them measure recycling.

Separating and Recycling is more work than throwing something away. Therefore based on economic principle there must be some incentive/reward or people wouldn't do it. Since their is no monetary reward it must me Halo affects.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by puckedoff

Consumers complain about excess packaging but are not prepared to pay the additional cost associated with expensive packaging, additional damaged product and more costly shipping practices.

Yes I'm sure there's no happy medium between current practice and damaging product.



We're paying either way. Recycling fees that will continue to go up or product prices that will continue to go up. If I'm getting ****** either way, may as well do it with less waste.

[Ace]

I think i must be way under utilizing my green bin, if pizza boxes are good, then can all cardboard go in there? How about paper? What else am i missing?

I'm constantly at max on the blue and 5% on the green, would love to shift that around.

[8sPOT]

Maybe the answer is hemp. Plastic bottles that are fully bio-degradable, in fact why not start using hemp for all kinds of stuff?



https://hempplastic.com/