
NEW HANOVER COUNTY—China’s pullback on recycled imports will soon hit local waste management providers. Inevitably, customers may soon have to share the recyclable load.
Pink Trash, a private waste management provider, received a letter last week announcing price increases from its national supplier, Sonoco Recycling.
RELATED: How China’s import policies have left recycling facilities with tons of waste
Based out of Wilmington, the hot pink bins collect waste from 24,000 New Hanover, Pender, Brunswick and Onslow County residents.
Small business cost
Starting Thursday, Pink Trash says it will be charged $47 a ton when it drops off its recyclable materials to Sonoco’s facilities off Highway 421.
That’s nearly a 47 percent increase from the per-ton price Pink Trash is used to processing its single-stream recyclables. Because Pink Trash isn’t under contract with Sonoco, it is bearing a cost increase that direct customers of Sonoco won’t feel as immediately.
“They won’t contract with us,” Field Procurement Manager Shaun Kiviat said.
Sonoco entered into a lease agreement with New Hanover County and Wilmington in 2015, charging the city $10 a ton to handle recyclables.
Kiviat says because Sonoco can’t increase prices of those it’s in contract with, the brunt of that burden is being felt by small businesses.
“A price increase of this magnitude puts unsustainable pressure on small companies and the communities the companies service,” Kiviat wrote in an email.
Pink Trash will soon incur thousands more in expenses each month because of this price rearrangement. Still, it will make an attempt to not spread that cost to the customer.
“We’re going to do everything we can to not increase our customers,” Kiviat said.
The long haul
China’s “National Sword” inspection program was introduced to restrict foreign recyclable imports and restabilize its domestic recycling industry. For decades, U.S. recycling plants relied on China to purchase its recyclable material.
Sonoco Recycling, southeastern North Carolina’s recycling provider, exported almost half of all its recycled paper materials to China in 2016 according to its President, Mike Pope.
When China heightened its contamination standards national exports dropped creating a surplus of product worth far less than its previous asking price. This left a volume of material in the states, much of it ruined by rain and rendered useless.
Though Sonoco’s move to increase its pricing structure is a short-term strategy, it has not ruled out investing a domestic future.
“We are actively working on options for additional capital investment though in either case the costs to sort the recyclable materials have increased,” Pope wrote in an email.
Thus far Sonoco has eaten the added costs created by National Sword, but according to Pope, “cannot do so indefinitely.”
There is still a domestic market for recyclable materials, granted, it’s a much smaller one.
“Today mixed paper prices have turned negative,” Pope wrote. “The value of the material is less than the freight costs to ship it.”
Sonoco letter to Wilmington and Jacksonville customers by Johanna Ferebee on Scribd