How China's National Sword policy affects San Diego recycling

The city of San Diego has approved two new curbside recycling contracts, and they come with a twist. In 2017, recycling brought in four million dollars. The following year, three million. This year it's down to around $600,000. And next year the trash hits the fan with recycling set to cost the city three to three and a half million dollars.

"The whole situation has changed substantially in recent years due to China's National Sword policy," said Ken Prue, the city's recycling program manager, at the Jun 25 city council meeting. The existing revenue contract "will soon flip."

Starting in September, the city will pay up to $65 million over 7 years to re-home its recyclables. Of that, polystyrene plastic eats up $900,000. But is it even worth recycling? Like a plastic bag stuck in a tree, the talk snagged on polystyrene. Is there life outside the landfill? A foam version of polystyrene, the brand Styrofoam, is the most familiar form of the non-biodegradable substance.

"Styrofoam in food, that's one thing, but the ban the council majority passed last fall did not address what comes with televisions or computers" and countless other goods, said councilmember Kersey in a bid to keep recycling it. When tossed out, the foam packing peanuts "fly all over the neighborhood." The ban on food packaging leaves out packing materials, though it does ban distribution of certain items "made in whole or in part from polystyrene foam unless encased within another material," such as ice coolers, pool or beach toys, dock floats, and mooring buoys).

The portion of recyclables once China-bound has shrunk from 60 percent to 24 percent, unable to meet China's new limits on contaminants in loads. The rest goes to facilities in the U.S., Mexico, South Korea, Vietnam, India or Indonesia. "Wherever there are markets for the materials, and where manufacturing is occurring that would use them as feedstock," Prue said. "Ultimately it comes down to residents putting the correct materials in the bins." That makes it much easier to sort, resulting in more saleable rubbish. But confusion still abounds as to what goes where, councilmember Gomez said. And Styrofoam is one item that doesn't belong in the blue bin, so she couldn't support the contracts. "It really is about the recycling, or to be frank, the pretense of recycling because I do not believe that styrofoam is a product that can be recycled."

Councilmember Ward, who authored the city's polystyrene ordinance, concurred. "How many of the 15 tons that were sent to recycling facilities were actually recycled?" he asked. Prue said that in 2018 about 2700 tons of material went to a processing facility in Los Angeles, and half of it was diverted for recycling. About 15 tons was polystyrene, which the processor estimated was half block packaging and half food containers. Ward wasn't satisfied with the answer. "Once it gets out of the city of San Diego, you don't really know or care how it ended up?"

Mario X. Sierra, director of the Environmental Services Department, defended the recycling of polystyrene, saying "there's also the residual plastics that get captured" in recycling it. "Our processor is actually able to divert 2750 tons of plastic from the landfill, of which 15 tons were EPS. So there was a significant benefit, and also removing additional plastics as we were continuing to recycle EPS." But the recommendation to keep recycling it may change, Sierra said. They'll bring it all back to the environmental committee, then the city, in six months for an update, along with a comprehensive review of the zero waste plan. "When the zero waste plan got started in 2015, "assumptions and conditions were very different."