China’s new recycling rules could cost city $1 million
Tougher standards set by China for waste paper could mean a $1-million hit to Edmonton’s recycling effort as the city scrambles to tighten its sorting process, city officials say.
They’ve hired extra staff and slowed conveyor belts on the sorting lines, doing everything possible to get coffee cups, plastic knifes and cardboard out of the paper bundle.
An inspector from China visited last Wednesday, spending the entire afternoon inspecting bale after bale loaded onto five trucks bound for China. He tore a bale open to audit contamination levels.
“They said it was fine,” said city contract manager Michael Robertson, relieved each time he gets the good news.
“If only there was an option like Greys Paper we could use,” he said, referring to a now-bankrupt attempt to make recycled paper locally.
For decades, China has been a key buyer of recyclable materials from countries across the world, with major industries set up to turn bales of plastic, paper and other
waste into usable raw material.
But effective Dec. 31, Chinese officials tightened the rules to keep contaminated and mixed garbage out of the country. Now many cities are struggling to sell their product, searching for other markets and driving down prices across the board.
Edmonton is relatively well prepared. It only sells paper and cardboard to China, shipping everything else domestically. Tin cans go to a foundry in Hamilton, Ont., and most plastic to factories in B.C.
But last time the Chinese tightened standards, in 2013, the city saw a $1-million drop in revenue from the flooded market. Officials hope careful management and attention to detail this time will mitigate the impact.
“It’s early in the process for us. It will be managing on a monthto-month basis,” said Trent Tompkins, the city’s acting director of waste processing while giving a tour of the facility recently.
The recycling plant just off Anthony Henday Drive in Edmonton’s northeast receives 200 tonnes of blue bags a day from Edmonton homeowners, about the weight of a large blue whale.
A front-end loader scoops it onto a conveyor belt where it passes from station to station as now 53 sorters, making just over minimum wage, pick through it piece by piece. They first grab items dangerous to the facility — tarps, tires and Christmas lights — then sort out the various plastics, tin and paper, with help from the 20-year-old mechanical sorting systems.
Last year, the facility made $6 million by selling the recyclable product. It cost $8 million to operate.
“There’s definitely an advantage to having domestic and local markets for material,” said Tompkins, who said Edmonton is also now shipping used paper to South Korea, Vietnam and Malaysia.
That’s one reason why Edmonton previously partnered with Greys Paper Recycling to create an environmentally friendly recycled office-paper product. But the paper didn’t sell. The effort ended with Greys going bankrupt in 2016 and the city holding the equipment and still looking at new uses for the large domes it built for the effort.
Local companies do use a small fraction of Edmonton’s waste paper for roof-shingle backing and insulation.
Tires, paint and electronic waste are collected and passed on to the Alberta Recycling Management Authority, a provincially run body that ensures precious metals are carefully extracted and other parts are prepared for reuse.
Coping with Chinese regulatory changes is just one challenge facing Edmonton’s recycling facility this year. Officials also had to shut down composting operations in October after an engineering report warned the aeration hall was at risk of collapsing in a heavy snowfall.
The team is also due back before city council Feb. 23 with a plan for how to finally achieve a target of diverting 90 per cent of Edmonton’s residential waste from the landfill.
Officials have said residential compost bins will likely be needed to reach that target. Currently, the heavy, wet organics make Edmonton’s trash too wet for the new bio-gas plant on-site, resulting in a costly drying process.