Chinese import changes won’t affect City’s curbside recycling
‘NATIONAL SWORD’ PROGRAM WENT INTO EFFECT JAN. 1
Changes to Chinese customs programs involving their import markets are not likely to affect the incoming Lethbridge Curbside Recycling Program, says the City’s Waste and Recycling Services general manager.
“At this point, we don’t believe that the Chinese ‘National Sword’ program will have a significant impact in the curbside recycling program in Lethbridge,” Joel Sanchez wrote in an email on Friday. “Presently, our plastics are sorted locally and utilized to make plastic wood through a local manufacturer; our metals are recycled locally; and our paper and cardboard are shipped to various mills in North America.”
On Jan. 1, China’s latest program aimed at increasing environmental quality by reducing waste importation and contamination in recyclable materials went into effect.
Called “National Sword,” the operation bans the import of a number of recyclable materials and lowers the contamination rate for materials that will still be accepted. The changes are already causing disruptions in the recycling industry.
Meanwhile in Lethbridge, curbside recycling is set to be fully implemented in 2019 following construction of a materials recovery facility.
Christina Seidel, executive director for the Recycling Council of Alberta, said developments around Chinese markets came at a good time as far as Lethbridge is concerned.
“The timing is better for you because you have time to actually respond to this,” she said.
She said the news is a wakeup call for recycling programs around the province in terms of ensuring highquality material comes out of recycling streams.
“There are more markets than China,” she said. “But we need to be able to produce the material those markets want.”
In particular, she said recycling programs should be looking at domestic markets and accessing those markets as much as possible. This means providing material that is a high enough quality that it can be utilized by those markets.
“We are fully aware of this initiative by the Chinese government and have been working in the past months with organizations in Canada and the U.S. to review the impact and opportunities that this represents for the waste and recycling industry,” wrote Sanchez.
Two of the biggest issues with recycling streams involve the collection of glass and of plastic film — namely grocery bags.
An effort to increase quality of the recycling stream could include decisions on if or how much of each of these materials might be accepted in a single-stream recycling program and how much may need to be collected in other ways, such as recycling depots.
“Once you mix things together, then you always have to separate them out again after the fact,” Seidel said. “So if you can do some initial sorting right up front, you can avoid some of the problems and end up with higher-quality materials.”
Sanchez said the City is already dealing with quality concerns.
“We know for sure that the quality of the material to be accepted by the various end users will have to increase regardless of their destination,” he wrote. “Again, at this point all of our material has a very good quality, since our recycling stations generally sort the materials appropriately. We believe that communication across the recycling supply chain will be key, from producers, collectors, processors to end users to ensure high-quality recyclables that will have a market.”
Ultimately, it may come down to the capabilities of the sorting system being used. Some high-tech systems use optical sensors to sort various types of plastic.
“That’s the sort of thing that is very difficult or impossible to do manually,” said Seidel. “But you can also imagine that sort of system is also expensive.”
Sanchez confirmed the City has been working with its equipment supplier to install the required equipment in order to ensure a highquality output.
“We are still assessing the optimal mix of material that we put through the MRF so as to limit any contamination, and as such we are also reviewing all the materials that will be accepted in the blue cart at curbside and which ones will be accepted only at the depots,” he wrote.