Sonoma, California. – Bans, taxes and warm sentiments about saving the planet are great, but recycling plastics is still woefully insufficient.
That was the sentiment at the Western Plastics Association annual conference in Sonoma.
“People talk about roads, but recycling is infrastructure, too,” said Lee Anderson, director of problem management and state government relations at Minneapolis-based General Mills Inc..
But efficiently and cleanly turning old cups and bags into shiny new resin costs a lot of money.
“The consumer has been protected from the cost of recycling,” said Bruce Magnani, vice president of the Sacramento, California-based consultancy Houston Magnani & Associates.
Funding can come from a variety of sources, but government incentives are key.
Single-use items, mostly for foodservice, can be funneled into permanent products as covers, said Stacey Luddy, chief operating officer and chief financial officer for bay area consultancy More Recycling. But “the holy grail is circularity,” turning all those bags and bottles into even more bags and bottles, over and over again.
Speaker after speaker noted a downside to California’s rigorous single-use grocery bag ban: namely, fewer and fewer retailers are collecting used bags. This has an additional impact, Luddy said.
“When you don’t recycle plastic shopping bags, you also lose recycling paper and newspaper bags,” Luddy said.
A few years ago, American companies shipped their excess bottles and films to eager Asian recyclers. But that option is fast disappearing, especially in the wake of China’s National Sword, which virtually banned the import of waste plastic.
“We were constantly playing the shell game on the move,” said David Hudson, vice president of commercial business for Houston-based Avangard Innovative, which primarily serves businesses.
In response, Americans are increasing domestic capacity, but more funding is needed, said Ali Briggs-Ungerer, director of member services for the Washington-based Association of Plastics Recyclers.
“Investment in domestic infrastructure is needed. The import ban in China highlighted this,” Briggs-Ungerer said.
Infrastructure needs vary widely from state to state and even within states. Some locations need funding for curbside pickup and recovery facilities. In eco-friendly California, MRF’s ability is not so much the challenge as funding sophisticated machinery to sort different types of plastics, said Laurie Hansen, WPA legislative and executive director.
WPA is a Sacramento-based trade group of processors, packers, composers, resin producers, and recyclers in the western US and Canada. It has about 80 members.
