A U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association report reveals that almost 76 percent of scrap tires were recycled in products such as rubber-modified asphalt, automotive products, mulch for landscaping, and tire-derived fuel in 2019. This is down from 96 percent in 2013, when scrap tire recycling peaked.

The U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association (USTMA) released its 2019 Scrap Tire Management Report on Oct. 14. According to the report, while tires remain one of the most recycled products in the U.S., end-of-life markets are not keeping pace with the annual generation of scrap tires.

The report reveals that almost 76 percent of scrap tires were recycled in products such as rubber-modified asphalt, automotive products, mulch for landscaping, and tire-derived fuel in 2019. This is down from 96 percent in 2013, when scrap tire recycling peaked.

“Three decades after we successfully eliminated 94 percent of the over 1 billion scrap tires stockpiled around the country, this report reveals that efforts to find and develop new uses for scrap tires have stalled,” Anne Forristall Luke, president and CEO of USTMA, says. “We must take immediate steps to grow new and existing markets to recycle 100 percent of scrap tires. This not only protects our health and the environment—it drives innovation and jobs.”

While the number of scrap tires generated each year grew by almost 7 percent, the total number of scrap tires recycled or reclaimed has not significantly changed since 2017.

The report found that 56 million scrap tires remain in stockpiles, mostly in Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia and Washington. According to the association, half of which–New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas and Virginia—do not have active stockpile cleanup programs.

USTMA and its members work with state regulators, recyclers and other stakeholders to manage scrap tires and develop recycle and reuse markets.

According to the association, companies like France-based Michelin, Japan-based Bridgestone and Germany-based Continental use recycled carbon black (rCB) to produce new tires. Michelin has also partnered with Sweden-based Scandanavian Enviro Systems to increase end-of-life tire recycling using a pyrolysis process which converts scrap tires to new raw materials. Bridgestone has joined with Delta-Energy Group, Natchez, Mississippi, to bring at-scale use of rCB to the tire market, and Continental works with Pyrolyx, Munich, to help tire manufacturers scale up the production of rCB from scrap tires for use in products ranging from mobile phones to ink pens.

As part of its report, USTMA urged state regulators and federal lawmakers as well as recyclers, industry and environmental groups, and academic partners to do more to advance a circular economy.

Specifically, USTMA listed the following criteria for advancing a circular economy: 

The company is adding a 100-percent-recycled paper machine in Whitby, Ontario, to produce light-weight medium and liner.

Atlantic Packaging Products Ltd. , a Toronto-based manufacturer of containerboard and corrugated packaging products, says it will add a recycled paper machine in Whitby, Ontario, to produce 400,000 tons per year of light-weight medium and liner. Production is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2022, according to a news release from the company.

The new paper machine will be Atlantic's second recycled paper machine in Whitby. It is being built adjacent to the current machine, which has been operational since the 1990s. Atlantic describes the new machine as one of the most technologically advanced machines in North America.

ISRI communicated difficulties to the nation’s government regarding the process and the tight deadline.

The Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) says it has learned that Indonesia has postponed the implementation date of its registration process for companies that export scrap to that nation. The new deadline is Jan. 1, 2021, according to ISRI, while the original one had been Oct. 1 of this year.

An Oct. 15 notice from ISRI to its members says the process “has not been without complications” and indicates the association has “sent several letters to Indonesian government officials requesting that this process be delayed” while changes or improvements can be undertaken.

ISRI states, “We appreciate that the government has taken this decision, as it will allow scrap to continue to be traded while a more efficient – and thus, useful – system is implemented.”

ISRI has obtained a letter from Switzerland-based Cotecna Inspection SA that says in part recycling companies may confront delays in booking inspections for Indonesia-bound scrap. “ISRI recommends that members adhere closely to all requirements for quality to ensure scrap trade continues without concerns,” states the association.

The Cotecna letter also indicates that any scrap shipments made before the new Jan. 1 deadline “must arrive at the port of destination in Indonesia no later than Feb. 28, 2021.”

In addition to considerable recovered fiber imports, Indonesia imported 53,700 metric tons of aluminum scrap shipped from the United States in the first seven months of 2020, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. In the first five months of the year it received 50,000 metric tons of ferrous scrap from the U.S.

Michael Arcieri, sales manager at Ekman Recycling, is sharing about this topic during the Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference International (PPRCi), which airs Oct. 20-22. When the panel discussion for the PPRCi took place the first week of October, this registration deadline had not changed from Oct. 1.

“When we had our panel discussion, just about all recycled fiber shipments had been halted to Indonesia due to complications pertaining to export registration requirements, which I pointed out,” Arcieri wrote Recycling Today in an email. “The Indonesian government has since postponed the implementation of this export registration requirement to Jan. 1, 2020, to sort out these ongoing complications.”

Arcieri writes that “material is flowing again,” which is a critical difference that PPRCi attendees should be aware of.

Some nonferrous scrap grades and secondary metals have been taking export routes in 2020 largely unseen in the previous decade.

At the Non-Ferrous Division meeting of the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR), held online Thursday, Oct. 15, as part of its World Recycling Convention Week, a panel of traders portrayed conditions in many parts of the world as having been depressed in the second quarter of 2020 but rebounding considerably in the third quarter.

Within the market updates, another recurring theme involved the international shipping of nonferrous scrap grades and semifinished secondary metals in 2020 to and from nations that have not always been exporters or importers of such products.

Dhawal Shah of Mumbai-based Metco Marketing PVT Ltd. said that as India’s metals sector ramped back up in the late summer, it found “consistent homes in export markets like China and Japan” for aluminum alloy ingots that normally went toward its domestic vehicle sector.

Neighboring Pakistan also was a beneficiary of China’s early rebound from its bout with COVID-19, according to a market report Shah read from Aamir Malik of Karachi, Pakistan-based ABM Corp. Malik’s report indicated new environmental laws in China meant in 2020 “a lot of nonferrous scrap started coming to Pakistan for recycling and smelting to make ingots for the domestic as well as the international market.”

South African recyclers have long exported nonferrous scrap, but government restrictions and duties designed to keep scrap from leaving caused some changes in operations, said Sidney Lazarus of Durban, South Africa-based Non-Ferrous Metal Works Pty. Ltd. He said the restrictions made it more common for dealers to melt scrap to make “blocks and ingots” because they are now easier to export.

Nick Hinohara of Japan-based Metal Solution Provider said secondary aluminum consumers in that nation imported “almost 30,000 tons per month” of ingots from China last year. That figure dropped to 6,000 tons this July and to 10,000 tons in August.

“I think the reason for the sharp drop was that Chinese alloy became too expensive for the depressed Japanese market,” Hinohara said. China’s more expensive ingot might have been caused in part by its inability to bring in imported scrap. Some ingot makers in China reportedly even brought in ingots from other nations and then remelted them to meet domestic content laws.

As a result, Hinohara said, Japanese buyers have been “trying to shift to other suppliers,” including those in Russia, the United Arab Emirates or domestic producers. “Now Japan is less dependent on China” for secondary alloys, he commented.

Shen Dong of United States-based OmniSource Corp. said China’s 2020 quota system for scrap materials has seen it bring in about 880,000 tons of copper scrap and slightly more than 800,000 tons of aluminum scrap—figures well below those in previous years.

A new system that might come into place in 2021 could boost those numbers, but in 2020 metals producers brought in more copper cathode, aluminum ingots and other furnace-ready materials. Dong said, “Right now, on the consumers’ side, they are doing their best to source [furnace-ready] raw materials rather than processing scrap in China.”

Rick Dobkin of Shapiro Metals in the United States said the Donald J. Trump administration has initiated a sizable number of tariffs and trade restrictions, yet “our trade deficits are the worst they’ve been in 10 years.”

Regarding the U.S. presidential election, he predicted that if Trump is re-elected, the confrontational trade policies will continue, but “on steroids.” If opponent Joseph Biden wins, “We’ll probably slowly regress toward where we were, but not completely,” he predicted, saying some of the trade confrontations of the Trump administration “probably needed to happen.”

In the discussion, moderated by Natallia Zholud of Belarus-based TRM Group, many of the traders credited the recycling industry for its resiliency and urged traders and recyclers to think positively. Non-Ferrous Division President David Chiao of U.S.-based Uni-All Group said recyclers quickly learned in 2020 to “focus on adapting to the ‘new normal.’”

Shah said, “I think this recovery is owed to the resilience, the passion and the undying spirit of this industry.” He urged BIR members to “give yourself a pat on the back and continue to do what you love to do.”

Leopoldo Clemente of Italy-based LCD Trading S.R.L. commented, “We need to redouble our efforts by acting with honesty and loyalty and thinking positively,” adding that the industry had “overcome many difficulties,” including the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

Mogens Bach Christensen of Denmark-based H.J. Hansen Genvindingsindustri A/S said the Green Deal in the works in the European Union might bring with it challenges but also backs the concept that it is “important to increase the circular use of resources.” Added Christensen, “The recycling of nonferrous metals is crucial to the meeting of the targets” of the Green Deal, but said the scrap industry also needed to make it clear that “free trade of scrap metals contributes to the development of the circular economy” globally.

The BIR World Recycling Convention Week is an online event hosted by the Brussels-based organization Oct. 12-16.

Waste Management is moving to a fee-for-service model in its recycling business as well as further automating the recycling process to create a more sustainable recycling business.

John Morris, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Houston-based Waste Management (WM), shares his perspectives on the waste and recycling industry as well as his insights into WM’s operations as the keynote speaker for the Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference International (PPRCi). The broadcast event, which is organized and hosted by the Recycling Today Media Group, publisher of Recycling Today, is scheduled for Oct. 20-22, with Morris appearing at 8 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Tuesday, Oct. 20.

The discussion is wide-ranging, but one topic Morris speaks to is how WM is working to create more value out of the material entering the company’s material recovery facilities (MRFs) and to improve the sustainability of recycling.

Morris says that in the last four to five years, despite the low commodity market prices, the company has invested in its recycling infrastructure, either upgrading technology in its existing plants or building new MRFs. He mentions what WM has dubbed as its “MRF of the future” in Chicago. “We’re very, very pleased with that because it does a couple of things. One, it's automating and making us more efficient. Inside the plant, we're doing positive sorting with that equipment compared to what traditionally happens in a lot of the other older, single-stream facilities.”

He credits positive sorting for “building a much better product.” The automated and mechanized process the company is employing also is reducing its employees’ exposure to potentially dangerous items in the material stream, such as needles.

The increased use of automation also has helped WM address issues related to staffing at its MRFs. “Those are challenging jobs,” Morris says. “And to find people that you can get in there … has traditionally been a challenge.”

By automating as it has in Chicago, he says WM has been able to improve the quality of the commodities coming out of its MRFs as well as the efficiency of the facilities and the safety of its employees.

He adds that over the next three to four years, the company will have deployed “advanced technology” to some degree in virtually every one of its MRFs.

Morris says the company’s Chicago MRF employs optical sorters to achieve that quality and efficiency, though WM does have eight robots deployed nationally. “We’re continuing to look for opportunities to use robotics in the plants for a lot of those same reasons … But the plant in Chicago does not have any robotics and it relies on optical sorting.”

He says as single-stream recycling has grown in popularity, so has contamination in incoming material, leading to product quality and employee safety concerns. “A lot of what we see coming into the plant, not only is it not good for the outbound material but in a lot of cases when it's batteries, aerosol cans, those kinds of things, it can present some safety issues for employees.”

These employee concerns have been amplified by the current pandemic, Morris says.

“[A]t the onset of this pandemic, we wanted to keep our people safe, first and foremost. And, certainly, there were a few sleepless nights in the beginning of making sure that as a provider of essential services, that we were going to be able to do that.”

He says WM’s recycling business looks a bit different today because of those efforts, but its been largely successful in safeguarding its employees. “[W]hile we've certainly had some employees who were impacted personally, by-in-large, we've kept our folks safe, and it hasn't impacted any one of our facilities in a disproportionate way.”

Outside of employee safety, Morris says WM would like to be “further along in really reinforcing the foundation of the business.” He adds that the company is moving to a fee-for-service model so that it is “less reliant on commodity prices to drive the sustainability of the business.” Morris says, “[U]ltimately, we want recycling to be sustainable over the long term for the customers.”

For the full conversation, be sure to register for the 2020 Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference International. More information is available at http://paperplasticsna.recyclingtodayevents.com. Bundle your registration with the Oct. 19 MRF Operations Forum to benefit from discounted rates.