Recycling Marketplace
Marketing materials collected from municipal recycling programs is as simple as participating in the online Recycling Marketplace.
If you wish to recycle materials recovered from Material Recovery Facilities, Please ADD an inquiry to the
Curbside Separation &
MRF Materials
exchange.
You may obtain an indication of types of commodity grades and
current values
of MRF Materials from
Municipal Household Recycling Programs
Municipal Household Recycling Programs
Recycling materials from residential households presents a unique set of economic, political and educational challenges.
Anyone may access current markets for recovered materials by using the
Recycling Marketplace
platform and may track
market price
trends.
Understanding different program approaches such as
source separation or
single stream
collection systems will help to appreciate the differing dynamics and operational results.
Recycling Depot
Public Drop-Off Depots have been a traditional method for the collection of source separated recyclable materials.
Success of both maned and un-maned drop-off recycling programs hinge on public education, accessibility and convenience
that reinforce the voluntary support by individuals in the community.
Source Separation
Source Separation is a simple straight forward strategy to segregate materials at the source, stored in separate containers for collection
which maintains quality of the recycled materials. One of the hidden benefits of a Source Separation program is that the
householders achieve a high level of subliminal positive reinforcement and recycling awareness each time they deposit material in a collection container.
The alternative to Source Separation is the
Central Resource Recovery
approach.
Curbside Collection
The original blue box curbside collection recycling program was based on a theory of collecting source separated recyclable materials
in specially designed vehicles with separate chambers for each grouping of materials.
Limitations of this system where mainly focused on the speed of collection and the number of household stops a truck & driver could service in a day.
To reduce the cost of collection by reducing the number of trucks and drivers to service a population, a
single stream
strategy was widely adopted by most contractors and over time the Source Separation strategy was pretty much abandoned.
Single Stream Collection
For expediency, at the point of collection, materials where co-mingled or mixed together in a single chamber collection vehicle
with the intent that separation of the mixed recyclable materials would occur back at a central facility.
So the result of the decision to adopt single stream collection, the householders mixed their recyclables into their collection bin,
the collection trucks mix the material further as they dump the collection bins into their trucks.
The material is remixed again when the collection truck dumps back at the central Material Recovery Facility.
Material Recovery Facilities MRF
Central Separation of co-mingled or single stream recyclable materials can be performed at a material recovery facility MRF
with a combination of manual and mechanical sorting methods.
We also see the emergance of
The Super MRF.
The recyclable materials are sorted and separated into Newsprint and Glass, magnetically seperated Steel food cans and
eddy current seperated Aluminum Cans, with the remaining being
Mixed Rigid Plastics.
Many MRF operations further sort their plastics by manually picking out the bulk of the PET bottles and HDPE containers.
They are then left with a residual balance of mixed plastics.
Most MRF's achieve some level of operation efficiency but in general never seem to master the
marketing of secondary commodities.
Major issues that can emerge from MRF's are the cost of sorting, capacity of processing and quality contamination.
The combination of high levels of contamination and a poor secondary commodity marketing strategy can result in a
catastrophic failure and inhibits the ability to recycle the collected materials
and this results in the need to dispose of volumes of materials.
The Super MRF
The term Super MRF is a loosely used reference to a Material Recovery Facility (MRF) that has expanded to produce
Solid Recovered Fuel
(SRF)
as well as the traditional curbside recyclable materials (recycleate).
The evolution of the MRF as it merges some of the original concepts of Central Resource Recovery along with
variations of Wet/Dry programs the perform a
comprehensive
style of waste treatment.
Unlike traditional Waste to Energy
(WTE)
facilities that required a beneficial co-location of both the waste receiving/treatment
and the energy generation plant, The Super MRF allows for the distinct location of the raw waste treatment facility
separate from the thermal reduction facility.
Independent location and operation facilitates a logistics storage and transportation buffer
between the MRF output and the optimum input into the thermal reduction
process
that creates an efficient flow control.
Municipal Recycling Challenges
Municipal Recycling Organizers and Material Recovery Facility (MRF) managers are at a distinct disadvantage to
private sector recyclers
since they are not actively participating on a daily basis in buying and selling secondary commodities.
MRF's are collectors of a continuous supply of incoming materials that they are required to process and liquidate
on a regular production schedule
to avoid being buried irregardless of market conditions.
When adverse events occur in the market most MRF managers lack the flexibility, authority or experience to invoke
quick and sometimes radical contingencies.
Typically municipalities make arrangements with a single contractor to buy their output instead of participating in a
marketplace
that connects them directly to buyers worldwide.
Curbside Separation, MRF Material Prices
We track the Daily Spot Market Price of several grades of curbside separation, MRF materials from across our network and
prepare a number of Market Price Reports.
If you are interested in a longer term overview of historical prices, please check-out the
Multi-Year Summary
Reports.
The Curbside Recycling Composite Index tracks
Composite Index Trends
of key benchmark grades of curbside separation, MRF materials.
We offer a number of other
price reports
that provide market intelligence across the spectrum of secondary commodities and scrap materials.
The Multi-Year Spot Market Price Summaries
Annual price summaries of the historical high, low and yearly average of the spot market prices for
Curbside Separation, MRF Materials,
by specific grade of material.
Market Price Trends
The Curbside Recycling Composite Index tracks market price trends for a basket of materials from municipal curbside recycling programs.
The Index takes a
daily snapshot
of spot market prices and allows you to freely take a quick view of the past 7, 30, 90 days and 1 & 2 year trends.
If you require a more granular view of the spot market prices, subscriptions are available.
Recycling Price Trends
Recycling Company Directory
There are a multitude of companies actively involved in the recycling industry buying and selling recyclable materials each and every day,
you may use the
Recycling Company Directory
to browse a list of North American companies.
If you are involved in the recycling business, please feel free to
include your company
in the Recycling Company Directory
Recycling Equipment
If you wish to buy Recycling Equipment
feel free to browse the equipment directory or if you wish to buy or sell used equipment
ADD your inquiry
to the used recycling equipment exchange.
Recycling Discussion Group
Recent media trends seem to be portraying the perception that many materials like plastics are not recyclable,
Please feel free to add you comments or ask your
recycling questions
to The 4R's Forum, an open recycling discussion group established to exchange
thoughts and ideas related to Waste Recycling and Materials Recovery
