SEATTLE (Recycling Monster): The Haines Friends of Recycling (HFR) warehouse has almost seven tons of piled up plastic waste in a shipping container, waiting to be sent to Seattle for recycling. The warehouse normally ships plastic load of this size once in a year. It must be noted that HFR has been stockpiling plastic since October 2021, due to non-availability of markets for recycled plastic.

According to Stuart Ashton, Operations Manager at Juneau RecycleWorks, the municipal and private recycling programs have been shipping plastics without interruption. However, the agencies in Juneau have been forced to pay for getting plastics recycled for nearly two years now. As plastic recycling becomes more expensive, they will be left with no option but to landfill them, Ashton noted.

The ban on recycled imports by China almost six years back have affected shipment of millions of tons of plastic waste from the U.S. Earlier, China used to be a major destination of U.S. plastic scrap.

HFR is currently planning to implement on-site plastic recycling, thereby eliminating the need to ship the materials all the way to Seattle. As the machine cost exceeds HFR’s annual budget, it will have to look forward to other arrangements such as grants or donations to make it happen. The proposed machine would produce melted plastic which could be used in producing plastic lumber for making useful new products.