China’s ban on scrap imports a boon to U.S. recycling plants

[sloeffle]

I hope the investment in U.S. recycling facilities and manufacturing plants continues.

https://triblive.com/news/world/chinas-ban-on-scrap-imports-a-boon-to-u-s-recycling-plants/

 

[begreen]

We've seen some of this locally with the reopening and reconfiguring of a pulp mill to process cardboard. County govts. are looking at ways to pre-process some plastics on-site in order to expedite local plastics recycling.

 

[Ashful]

We've seen some of this locally with the reopening and reconfiguring of a pulp mill to process cardboard. County govts. are looking at ways to pre-process some plastics on-site in order to expedite local plastics recycling.

Cardboard, specifically corrugated, is my new pet peeve. Our household receives roughly 30 items from amazon.com every week, all individually packaged in separate corrugated cardboard boxes. I try to do well, accumulating several items in my cart for a day or three before eventually needing something ASAP and going to the checkout page, thinking all or most of them might show up in a single box. But they inevitably show up in a dozen separate boxes, all on the same day or two. I know why, they might be coming from separate warehouses, but it still feels frustrating and wasteful.

We put a 96 gallon roll-about recycling can every week, completely packed with corrugated, a few plastic milk jugs, and maybe a half dozen glass bottles. Easily 95% - 98% of our recycling mass or volume is corrugated, and 90% of that is from amazon.com. It could be easily reduced to 1/3 of its current volume, if amazon better managed their logistics for environmental consideration.

 

[begreen]

Maybe shop more locally to avoid the extra packaging? At that volume, you could justify a compactor!

 

[peakbagger]

The recent recycling "crisis" was at least partially artificial. Various waste firms introduced zero sort "recycling" so they could get a piece of the recycling pie and drive out competition. This degraded the recycle stream and then they shipped it offshore driving legit US operations out of business. Once US markets lost the capability to deal with their own recycling and the Chinese realized that Chinese firms were dumping most of it in illegal landfills, they pulled the plug.

Communities that run sorted recycling and exercise quality control generally have local markets to dispose of clean recyclables. Its the zero sort communities that are the one that are getting the press. There was a high level of temptation on the part of communities to divert trash into the recycling stream and they are paying for it now.

I did some work down at a linerboard recycling mill in CT 15 years ago. They actually managed local recycled collection plants for nearby communities to improve the quality of the cardboard they received. They could handle just about any contaminant but it cost a lot of horsepower and it created a larger waste stream that had to go to landfill. If they cant do it for less, at some point the cardboard comes from offshore and they go out of business. One of the popular misconceptions is dirty pizza boxes cannot be recycled, that is BS, it just means the plant processing it was designed poorly.

The other thing is to set recycled percentages for materials or adopt the European approach where the manufacturer has to deal with the waste packaging.

 

[begreen]

Communities that run sorted recycling and exercise quality control generally have local markets to dispose of clean recyclables.

I sincerely wish this were true here, but unfortunately recycling in more rural western communities is very expensive. Most don't do it because of the cost to ship to the nearest processor. In our state, large communities like Walla Walla do virtually no recycling because of the distance to the nearest processor. This is in a region that is bullish on recycling. The situation might be better in New England where distances to major metropolitan centers are less, but out west recycling just isn't financially feasible so they landfill everything.

The other thing is to set recycled percentages for materials or adopt the European approach where the manufacturer has to deal with the waste packaging.

Yes, 100% agree that this is the approach we need to take to address the issue.

 

[AlbergSteve]

Cardboard, specifically corrugated, is my new pet peeve. Our household receives roughly 30 items from amazon.com every week, all individually packaged in separate corrugated cardboard boxes. I try to do well, accumulating several items in my cart for a day or three before eventually needing something ASAP and going to the checkout page, thinking all or most of them might show up in a single box. But they inevitably show up in a dozen separate boxes, all on the same day or two. I know why, they might be coming from separate warehouses, but it still feels frustrating and wasteful.

We put a 96 gallon roll-about recycling can every week, completely packed with corrugated, a few plastic milk jugs, and maybe a half dozen glass bottles. Easily 95% - 98% of our recycling mass or volume is corrugated, and 90% of that is from amazon.com. It could be easily reduced to 1/3 of its current volume, if amazon better managed their logistics for environmental consideration.

The Amazon packaging is ridiculous. Most items come in packaging that is 10-20 times larger than it has to be, in multiple layers, and in bubble backed paper that can't be recycled. The resistors on the right had four layers of packaging! At least our cardboard ends up as weed block and mulch in the garden.

 

[begreen]

The shippers in the warehouses are under intense pressure to get product out quickly. That often leads to oversized packaging. They grab the nearest standardized box that will definitely fit. There is no time for optimization. Amazon (and Walmart) are introducing bots that take over this job by making a custom box on-site so that it fits better with less waste.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-automation-exclusive-idUSKCN1SJ0X1
https://gizmodo.com/amazon-to-roll-out-automated-packing-machines-offers-1834716594

 

[wilsoncm1]

The Amazon packaging is ridiculous. Most items come in packaging that is 10-20 times larger than it has to be, in multiple layers, and in bubble backed paper that can't be recycled. The resistors on the right had four layers of packaging! At least our cardboard ends up as weed block and mulch in the garden.
View attachment 244334

I don't understand the complaint. You're choosing to shop with Amazon vs a local business. It seems that you're consciously making the choice to put price over packaging. The power is yours and only yours.

 

[AlbergSteve]

I don't understand the complaint. You're choosing to shop with Amazon vs a local business. It seems that you're consciously making the choice to put price over packaging. The power is yours and only yours.

Price over packaging? Don't think so. If that were the case I'd do all my shopping at Walmart. The last time I was in Mallwart was 20 years ago, and that was for a friend. We choose, 99% of the time to patronize all of our local businesses every day of the year. Sometimes there is no bricks and mortar store to shop at. Our tiny town actually had an amateur radio shop to buy parts at, now there are only a handful in Canada. Sometimes we don't have a choice.

 

[WinterinWI]

This picture is from last November of some batteries we ordered from Amazon. Yes, those batteries were the only thing in the box.

I don't particularly like Amazon, I would rather pay a little more to support local businesses, but the convenience can't be beat, especially for those who need to drive a significant distance to the store. It's pretty frustrating if you make the drive and they happen to be out of what you need. I'm usually in town often enough to pick up what I need, but between work/kids activities/home projects, sometimes life is just too short for another trip to the store.

 

[Ashful]

I don't understand the complaint. You're choosing to shop with Amazon vs a local business. It seems that you're consciously making the choice to put price over packaging. The power is yours and only yours.

Guys, I don’t know where you shop, but Amazon is almost NEVER the cheapest option. I knowingly pay more than I have to for items from Amazon everyday, because the other constraints of my life dictate that I do most of my shopping after 11pm. I wish I had the time to drive all over the county buying the items I need from mom and pop stores, but the reality is that I don’t.

The days of stay at home housewives or part-time working mothers spending a large fraction of their week driving around to buy the things that keep a household going seem to be over, for a lot of people. Places like Amazon owe a lot of their success to filling this need.

Someday, the only brick and mortar stores remaining might be those that actually sell brick and mortar. It’s too heavy to ship via Fed Ex.

 

[WinterinWI]

Guys, I don’t know where you shop, but Amazon is almost NEVER the cheapest option. I knowingly pay more than I have to for items from Amazon everyday, because the other constraints of my life dictate that I do most of my shopping after 11pm. I wish I had the time to drive all over the county buying the items I need from mom and pop stores, but the reality is that I don’t.

The days of stay at home housewives or part-time working mothers spending a large fraction of their week driving around to buy the things that keep a household going seem to be over, for a lot of people. Places like Amazon owe a lot of their success to filling this need.

Someday, the only brick and mortar stores remaining might be those that actually sell brick and mortar. It’s too heavy to ship via Fed Ex.

Agree with everything you're saying, but for prices, maybe it's a regional thing. Heavy/bulky items aside, Amazon is cheaper than a lot of stores here, except maybe for large retailers like Walmart. Not always an apples/apples comparison though with brand differences ect. Also need to figure in the prime membership cost, which if you buy a lot of items, is negligible. Amazon is more expensive for grocery type items when compared to grocery stores here. Probably varies with product category as well.

Anyway, I feel like I'm starting to wander off the path a little bit for this thread...

 

[kborndale]

I would say Amazon is the cheapest option for me 80% of the time. It's often cheaper than home Depot, cheaper than the supermarket, almost always cheaper than any electronics store.....I rarely find something cheaper at a brick and mortar store and I don't live in a rural area.

 

[begreen]

Time for a new thread on Amazon shopping in the Inglenook. This is getting way off topic, again.

 

[begreen]

This is a good article on how China's National Sword program has changed the processing flow of recyclables. It's a complex problem and it takes time to address the many systemic flaws. The toughest one frequently is dealing with a lazy consumer that recycles poorly. Contamination is the reason China started refusing our recyclables. As a response to China's new policies we now divert a lot to Thailand and Malaysia, but that is getting old quickly. We need much better domestic solutions and policies in order to solve this issue. It will take times to build and refine recyclable processing centers in the country, but once they are in place a lot of recyclables can be preprocessed here to make the product more sellable. Other solutions start with better education of the consumer, but also making it more convenient for them to recycle. Ultimately though, the best solutions point toward the development of a circular economy where the producer of the item is responsible for the materials used cradle to cradle.

https://www.ft.com/content/360e2524-d71a-11e8-a854-33d6f82e62f8

Ultimately, if the world is not prepared to think about waste reduction and actually treat waste as a resource, next generations will drown in their own waste.