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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In November 2016, California voters passed Proposition 64, which legalizes the recreational use of marijuana for adults over 21 in California. This change rolls out in January of 2018, posing a challenge for the California legislature, which must scramble to plan how to regulate this $7 billion industry before then. While there are many important issues that must be addressed, there are a few that require increased attention. As a society, we want to keep the psychoactive residues of marijuana out of the hands of children. Further, we need sustainable waste handling in place in order to minimize the impact of the marijuana industry on the California environment. Lastly, we need to ensure that the State of California is generating the maximum amount of taxable revenue possible from the passage of this legislation. What needs to be put into place to transform an industry that has operated without restrictions into one that has safety and sustainability procedures and is organized to pay taxes on the profits?

In the near future, Green Planet 21 will be using the Kanemiya machinery, a sustainable technology fully capable of processing the plastic packaging and wrappings used by the marijuana growers and the distributors to responsibly handle the waste. The Kanemiya machines will clean and shred the packaging in preparation for recycling, removing any remaining marijuana residue from the packaging in the process. Our chain of custody provides manufactures reliable security for problematic materials, eliminating the unintended public safety consequences associated with marijuana residue. For example, there have been horrible news stories detailing the accidental deaths of Colorado children who accidentally ate sweets containing doses of marijuana they did not understand. As a state that is in the process of regulating the marijuana market, we also need to control the possibility of someone stealing and scraping the bags for profit. Eliminating the entry of marijuana residue into the waste stream by cleaning the bags prior to disposal will also prevent un-taxable profiteering.

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At Green Planet 21, our clients who are major food producers are intent on creating more sustainable workflows, on cutting their waste disposal costs, and on achieving zero landfill. Coca Cola called us when they needed to destroy 22,000 cases of a juice product they were not happy with. They wanted to be sure that the bottles would never find their way into any marketplace. Here is a video that describes how we handled their problem.

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