Recycling’s the Law, but It’s Getting Tougher

COLD SPRING – Imagine having a business and the largest customer quits buying. That’s what the Cape May County Municipal Utilities Authority (MUA) is experiencing with its largest customer for recycling, China.
At its Feb. 28 meeting, the Cape May County League of Municipalities got an update from MUA Executive Director Joseph Rizzuto on the state of recycling in the county.
In his presentation entitled, “Recycling at a Crossroad, Quality, Contamination and the Changing Marketplace,” Rizzuto painted the present perplexing state of the recycling business caused, in part, by what he termed China’s National Sword in 2017. It prohibited the importation of recovered mixed paper, recycled plastics (Types 1 and 2), PVC and polystyrene.
That Asian nation is proposing a full ban on all recovered materials by 2020. Such an action casts a shadow over much of the future of recycling, not only in the county, but nationwide.
China was the MUA’s major buyer of Cape May County’s discarded cardboard from refrigerators and shipping boxes to those packages from internet purveyors. The price of recycled cardboard dropped from $75 a ton to $5 a ton, Rizzuto said.
Since China was such a huge consumer of the material, buyers in Vietnam, Indonesia and India could not make up the difference.
Rizzuto noted that in 2018, the county’s towns hauled to the sanitary landfill in Woodbine 90,047 tons of municipal solid waste. Also in that year, those towns were responsible for 28,604 tons of recyclables.
He cited a fact of recycling life: Recyclables do not create an economic or environmental benefit until they are sold as commodities or manufactured into products.
While the MUA decided to take all recyclables “single stream,” in order to make it easier for residents to keep recyclables from entering the trash stream, it’s not proven to be the win-win originally anticipated.
That’s because some people persist in putting all their recyclables into a plastic bag. Wrong. Those bags aren’t opened at the recycling plant. Instead they are tossed into the other municipal solid waste.
Rizzuto cited the conflict some people have deciding whether or not their products are recyclable. He termed that “wishful” recycling being tossed into the recycling can hoping it will find its way into that mythical recycling triangle.
Some of those items include hypodermic needles, red Solo cups (they can’t be recycled in Cape May County), and plastic bags in which many carry groceries and goods home, (which have been targeted by several municipalities).
While those bags can, when correctly recycled (by plants outside the area), be recovered into plastic boards used in seats and decking, the local recycling facility cannot use them.
Rizzuto said large supermarkets and chain convenience stores have recycling cans for those bags, which are collected and then recycled by the stores. A market in Sea Isle City reported having to empty its recycling cans about three times daily in summer.
Rizzuto said some domestic plants are taking cardboard and reducing it to pulp, then selling that pulp to China. With that commodity in hand, the Chinese can then produce cardboard at their mills.
As municipal officials listened, they heard Rizzuto say that the cost of recycling is increasing and commodity values are remaining low.
What MUA treasurer William Burns warned the officials was that, as the state of recycling sales slips, those rebate checks that had become an annual standard from the MUA to the towns, may switch into the towns paying the MUA to take their recycling.
As contracts with haulers come for renewal, it may become more costly to recycle.
A question was asked by an official, why not take all the waste and dump it into the landfill and skip recycling? Answer: Recycling is still the law in New Jersey.
“Laws can be changed,” someone added.
Rizzuto then outlined the complications that come with buying products online. Those products, if liquid, must be taped and or wrapped in a plastic bag. The container is then placed into a box with shipping material around it to prevent spillage or damage.
How much of that is recyclable? Some is, some isn’t. How’s a consumer, with the best intentions, to recycle? It is a dilemma that increases as buying habits change.
Rizzuto noted that the market for glass is so minimal that the MUA uses glass from its recycling plant to cover solid waste at the end of the day.
What’s the next move? Back to basics, he said. That means an emphasis on bottles, jugs, jars and containers. He asked that they be empty, clean and dry.
Of paper placed in those recycling cans, cover it to keep it from getting waterlogged.
Finally, never put recyclables in containers or plastic bags.
When in doubt, the MUA has an app available on its website (www.cmcmua.com/waste-wizard) for cellphones so that consumers will know what is and isn’t recyclable in Cape May County.
Rizzuto’s parting words, “Recycle the right things correctly.”