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RECYCLING FAQsRECYCLING

How does recycling work?While recycling as a personal behavior does have many environmental benefits, at its core it is a business that is based on the commodities market for specific materials like paper, cardboard, alu-minum and different types of plastic. Materials from Johns Hopkins are sent to Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) where they are sorted by type then sold to a processor or directly to manufactur-ers who then use that recycled material to make a new product instead of using virgin material that was harvested, mined or drilled out of the ground.

MATERIALSWhy are some materials accepted in some areas and not others or accepted at one point in time and then unacceptable?In order for an MRF to accept a type of material it must be able to sell it to make a profit. Buyers for certain commodities can vary from the East Coast, Midwest, South and West Coast and the sorting technology at different MRFs varies greatly so not all items can be sorted and sold every-where. Also, if manufacturers no longer want to use recycled material to make a new product, either because of a change in manufacturing processes, low quality or a cheaper alternative, they won’t buy it from the MRF or processor. Markets change rapidly and can be quite volatile so MRFs can continue to collect the item and sell it at a loss, store it until the price of that material goes up or, sadly, throw it away. And just like other markets, price is based on supply and demand which affects decisions made at the MRF. In the current recycling climate, there is a shortage of processors to receive recyclable materials which has lowered the prices for many commodities causing MRFs to restrict what they are willing to accept from institutions like JHU. This is a global issue that is affect-ing us locally.

PROCESSORSWhy is there a shortage of processors?For the past few decades, China has been the main recipient of the world’s recyclable materials. As the industry tried to increase recycling collection, they promoted single stream recycling in which previously items like paper and cardboard were collected separately from metal and plastic. Unfor-tunately, the public was not uniformly well educated about what exactly can and cannot be put into a single stream bin and not all MRFs were prepared for the onslaught of contamination from hoses, bulk items and diapers that residents and businesses were putting into the bin. But we continued to send these items mixed in with the good recyclable materials to China.

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In 2017, China imposed strict restrictions on the quality of imports requiring that there be less than 0.05% contamination, essentially banning the import of recyclables from around the world. With very few other countries able to take the material the price for all commodities plummeted and MRFs had nowhere to send their material or couldn’t make any more to justify the sorting all of the material.

WASTEI’ve heard that recycling is a waste of money and that we should just throw every-thing away because that’s what is happening to it anyway.Recycling should be seen as a long-term part of the solution to waste reduction and a sustain-able future. It should not be the first or only answer to it. Reducing the consumption of goods and products will always be the best option. The larger environmental impact of goods is upstream in the production of those goods not in the disposal. So wherever possible buy less and buy sturdy, durable goods that will last and can be reused.

Recycling as an industry and a social behavior has existed for centuries and will likely always be necessary to provide the raw materials we need to produce goods without continuing to harvest, drill and mine non-renewable resources. This current situation is a wakeup call to consumers that we need to consume less and sort properly and to the US that we need to reinvest in domestic recycling facilities and markets. The industry and behaviors will adapt. Prices are down but they will rebound. We need to take the long view and continue to sort the items that are the traditional higher valued materials like cardboard, paper, aluminum and #1 and 2 plastic bottles and jugs.

JHU staff are doing their due diligence to identify as many outlets for our recycling materials across the region as possible and visit MRFs to view their operations firsthand to provide our best possible assurance that the material we send to the facilities is ultimately being sorted and sold for recycling.

Single stream recycling - the common recycling collection system in which all your bottles, cans, paper and cardboard can go into a single bin - may have made it easier for people to recycle but a lack of adequate education to make sure people put the right items in the bin and markets for those items resulted in too much contamination.

GLASSWhy aren’t you accepting glass anymore?Glass is still recyclable but there are a variety of issues that make it troublesome for recycling facil-ities. The biggest challenge is that glass gets broken during the single stream recycling collection process making it difficult to sort out from all the other materials using existing sorting technology. Secondly, the broken shards contaminate other materials like paper and cardboard lowering their quality resulting in an inability to sell the material to mills.

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PLASTICWhy can’t I recycle all plastic?Not all plastics have equal value but in order to make recycling easier many communities were told to put all types of plastics into our recycling bins. When the value of recycling markets dropped, it cost facilities too much to sort out and dispose of lower value plastics #3-6 so now we are only able to accept plastics #1 & 2, bottles and jugs..

TAKING INITIATIVEWhat can I do beyond sorting my waste properly?The best thing individuals can do is Reduce and Reuse first. Buy less and use reusable mugs, bags and other items so that you have less to throw away. The majority of the negative environmental impacts of consumption happen at the production stage so consuming less will always be better for our health and our planet.

Buy things with post-consumer recycled content. This strengthens the market for recycled materi-als to be the feedstock for new products.

Look for alternatives to glass and plastic that have much stronger recycling markets and reliable infrastructure like aluminum cans.

The recycling world is ever evolving – just like your smart phone – so stay informed.

For more answers to questions not included here, please

reach out to us at sustainability@jhu.edu!