Recycling

Is recycling worth it? When it took off four decades ago, recycling was seen as one of the environmental movement’s great successes. It morphed into a gigantic global trade, with freighters that carried China’s exports abroad returning home with half the planet’s scrap paper and plastic stuffed into their otherwise-empty containers. Then China changed its mind, leaving cities and towns around the world stuck with growing piles of waste. That’s forced them to reconsider the cost of being green.

China upended global recycling markets in 2017 when it stopped importing most used plastic and paper; too much of the material was worthless or worse, tainted with hazardous substances such as mercury and lead. The decision sent prices of scrap plastic and recovered paper tumbling, creating a crisis for municipalities that had relied on such sales to subsidize curbside recycling. In the U.S., the average price of used corrugated cardboard fell 85% in two years to $28 per ton in August 2019. It hasn’t been easy to find other takers for used plastic, since lower oil prices have made virgin plastic cheaper than recycled. While nations such as India and Taiwan have been importing more recyclables, they don’t come close to handling the amount China once did. Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand initially increased imports but are now also imposing rules that limit them. And few industrial nations have enough capacity to recycle all the material on their own. Some communities are running out of room to store the mounting stockpiles and have stopped collecting plastic, paper products or glass. Some places in the U.S., Australia and Canada are sending material to landfills or burning it. At the same time, under pressure from consumers, several well-known companies have pledged to use more recycled and biodegradable goods. In 2019, companies including Mars, PepsiCo and Unilever vowed to cut use of virgin plastic.