Last year, the Chinese government announced by 2018, it would no longer import plastic and paper collected by municipal recycling programs in the West.
This is expected to have a serious impact on many countries who depend on China to accept recycling when no one else will.
For example, the United States sends them 1.42 million tons of scrap plastic every year. China uses much of the recycling as raw material for new production and one of their complaints is that much of the material it receives is poor quality.
Currently, the city and county of Peterborough send nothing to China. Officials say this is because the material produced at the Municipal Recycling Facility on Pido Road is of such quality that it is in high demand from local businesses.
“We have a two-stream collection system here in the city where we ask people to separate their containers from their paper. And the consequence of that is we do have a much cleaner product at the end of the day,” said Virginia Swinson with the City of Peterborough.
The MRF processes 20,000 tons of recycled fibres and plastic, glass and metal containers every year.
Manager David Deem says producing a quality product that manufacturers want is a combination of the right technology and talented employees.
However, he says the creation of such a product starts with residents when they properly sort their recycling for curbside blue box pickup.
“They are the ones that are able to sort their material into their two blue boxes — one for fibres, one for containers. They are the ones doing the yeoman’s work to make sure it starts off with a cleaner product,” says Deem.
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