Case Studies and Resources

The recycling industry has changed. Contamination, once allowed by haulers, has ruined the cardboard recycling industry and kept the price of OCC (old corrugated cardboard) under the price per ton levels needed to make it a profitable business. For the last 2 years haulers have tried in many ways to stop the bleeding of profits based on what they can recoup from selling their cardboard. The United States largest hauler is responsible for much of this issue. As the largest seller of cardboard to China there was so much contamination that the Chinese finally said “NO” and demanded much cleaner cardboard. That meant that they now had to process all their cardboard to clean out the contamination. There can be no plastic bags, bottles, Styrofoam, or waxed cardboard. With no one policing the dumpsters you would never see the issues that we, in the waste industry, see on a daily basis.

Over the past few months, we have heard a lot about bans on single use plastic and foam items; things like plastic bags, drinking straws, and take out containers.  We have spent some time looking into these bans and whether or not they will actually make an impact on plastic waste.  As of right now, only about 9% of all plastic that has ever been produced has been recycled. 

Businesses are always asking us how they can reduce their waste costs.  There are options that are not always apparent.  Our first step is to shop prices with haulers, from there we negotiate with the haulers and sometimes even leave the hauler for another.  In some cases cost avoidance includes getting the client to not overfill their dumpster, close the dumpster lids, and to not place non-recyclable material into recycling dumpsters.  Contamination is bad for you, bad for the haulers and bad for the commodity market.

We are here in the beautiful Las Vegas for the National Association of Convenience Stores annual convention.  If you are there, drop by and visit with us at booth # 2674 on the 1st level of the North Hall.  We look forward to meeting everyone.

Following up on a previous post, we have been putting together a series of pictures and the amounts charged by the haulers for their "overflow" charges.  If you have been following our blog you will see that we have covered overages and ways to avoid them several times.  We fully understand and accept that there will be overages from time to time, what we don't accept is haulers charging overage fees on something that doesn't qualify.  Padding the bill is not acceptable, which is why we audit every hauler bill we receive and require the hauler to provide proof.  Even then, we don't accept every charge as you will see in the below pictures.