Boxes and wrapping paper tossed into the recycling bins during the holidays typically are turned into pulp for tissues, cereal boxes, construction material, or cardboard packaging. But the recession has hit recycling companies just as hard in recent months by driving down demand and prices for their materials and the results can be seen at this Green, Oregon recycling plant: Less paper is getting sent out and more is piling up.
At a time when every dollar counts, organizations strapped for cash are receiving thousands less than their usual per month price for recycled fiber, plastics and metals. The decline in revenue, however, does not pose a large risk of ending recycling programs in Douglas County. Haulers are prohibited by state law from putting it into landfills after picking it up. The challenge is how do companies continue to pick up recycling with out their usual cash flow?
The heaps of bales are a vivid example of how industries and economies in disparate places rely on one another, and show how global market forces can challenge environmental efforts. Since 2000, increasing amounts of recycled paper have been exported as manufacturing has grown in Asia and as paper mills have closed in the United States.
Until October, more than a third o
f the country's recycled paper was sent abroad. The vast majority was loaded onto tankers headed to China, where mills turn it into corrugated cardboard boxes often used to package televisions and stereos before they are shipped back to the United States. With the economic downturn, fewer people are buying products that require these boxes, and the export market for recycled paper has almost completely dried up.Prices for recovered waste paper have plummeted to record lows. At the docks in Portland, recovered paper for export has fallen from a peak of nearly $200 per ton in July to about $20 per ton today, if you can find a buyer. Domestically, prices have also plunged. Residential newsprint prices in the Northwest fell from a peak of $180 per ton in August to $20 per ton.
At over $40 per ton, the cost of land filling is too high to make recycling seem like a bad idea financially. Even if cities and towns had to pay for their paper to be recycled it would be cheaper than throwing away that paper as waste. But here in Douglas County where we have the last “free” landfill in the country, disposal is subsidized and folks are disinclined to pay. Most landfills charge about $70 per ton to just cover the cost of land filling and associated services. In this way, those who generate the waste pay for it instead of the burden being placed on the general population.
Even though recycling collections will likely continue, the plunge in demand means that not all old paper will not be immediately recycled into new paper products in the near future. But some leaders in the recycled paper industry remain optimistic about finding buyers for the bales of used paper and cardboard accumulating in warehouses. They predict that in a year, if not sooner, demand for recycled products will rebound. Some have seen recycled paper prices drop in the past and recover. Others think that domestic mills, still making tissue fiber and paperboard for packaging such products as cereal and pizza, could eventually pick up the slack in foreign demand. In the meantime, our partners in recycling, Sunrise Enterprises and local garbage haulers included, are going out of their way to weather the storm and stockpile materials as long as they can.
Be confident that our recycling programs will remain intact, but “Be Prepared” as the Scouts say, for temporary changes in what can and cannot be picked up curbside. Local haulers are in discussion with State officials for possible modifications to their obligations and may need to alter schedules or materials until recycling markets rebound.
For more information contact me at 440-4350 or online at RecyclePower.org and don’t forget to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle to “Trash Douglas County Less!”
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