SEELEY LAKE – Sunday, May 6 is the last day the Seeley Lake Refuse District will accept plastic recycling. This is a result of Pacific Recycling in Missoula no longer accepting plastics due to continuing problems with improper sorting, low market value, increasing freight costs and overall loss of revenue from plastic recycling.
China has been a major buyer of lower recovery and mixed grade recyclable materials for many years.
Over the past several years they have been phasing in import restrictions on many of these items. The most recently impacted are plastics and paper.
Pacific Recycling is no longer able to sell imperfectly sorted plastic and paper products to China. All recyclable paper and plastic must be held to the same or higher standards as required for domestic mills.
The result of restricted exports has been a huge glut of recyclables in the United States, including truckloads of mixed grade materials that no one can use because of the economics of sorting. It costs more to sort than the sorted end product is worth. Most likely much of this mixed product will end up in landfills as collectors run out of space to store it. The natural result of excess domestic supply is depressed pricing.
In addition, since mills have ample supply to choose from, they have become fussy beyond any written grade specification. Mixed products are downgraded to zero value, charging to take it or flat out rejecting the load.
One example Pacific shared was in regards to cardboard. For many years the industry standard has allowed up to five percent off-spec content such as chipboard or other types of fiber. Export buyers are now allowing only 0.5 percent and some only allow 0.1 percent. That means as little as two cereal boxes and a six pack container in a 1,200 pound bale could result in rejection of an entire load.
Pacific Recycling said the bottom line is everyone involved in every step of recycling needs to step up their game to produce a clean, correctly sorted recyclable product.
The first and most important step begins with the consumer placing the correct recyclables in the correct bin. Mixed product may be land filled and the recycling option discontinued if not sorted correctly. The only work around for correct initial sorting is for recyclers to charge enough to take recyclables to cover the costs of sorting.
Pacific Recycling accepts paper sorted into the following categories:
• Newspaper: If it comes in the newspaper, it is acceptable.
• Office Paper: Includes white paper, pastel colors, envelopes (window OK), manila folders, most junk mail and shredded variations of this list. Staples, paperclips, tape, rubber bands and sticky notes are okay. In this category newspaper, magazines, catalogs, carbon paper, deep tone or bright colors, construction paper, wet strength paper, paper cups, napkins and anything brown is unacceptable.
• Cardboard: Includes corrugated boxes and grocery sacks only. No single wall chipboard material including: six and 12-pack beverage containers; cereal, shoe and Kleenex boxes; tubes including paper towel and toilet paper rolls or cores from other rolled products.
• Magazines and Catalogs
• Phone Books
Pacific Recycling also accepts E-Scrap including computer towers, laptops, servers, internal components, printers and other peripherals, cords, stereos and other electronics. This does not include televisions or monitors.
Plastic bags are not recyclable. Contents must be dumped out and bags thrown away. For more information contact the Seeley Lake Refuse District at 406-677-3809 or Pacific Recycling at 406-543-7280.
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