Greetings, Bristow,
The following was written by the founder and CEO of Replenysh, Mark Armen. (Please note that the market values of the products he mentions may have changed since he wrote this in May.)
“Ok...so we are burning cash. Contrary to public perception, there are strong markets for recycled materials here in the US.
Yet, US cities, communities and businesses continue to drop recycling and material recovery programs opting to bury or burn the materials.
If I read another article about cities and counties dropping recycling because of China - I will gouge my eyes out.
Decision-makers should stop getting their sole market advice from vendors who are incentivized to bury & burn materials. Journalists should do a bit more research.
The market for recycled materials, or secondary materials, is stronger than ever!
Cardboard is trading at $0.05 per lb or $2,000.00 per truckload.
HDPE natural plastic containers (milk jugs) are trading at approx $1 per lb or $40,000.00 per truckload!ers (detergent bottles) are trading at approx $0.45 per lb or $18,000.00 per truckload.
PET plastic containers (soda or water bottles) are trading at approx $0.25 per lb or $10,000.00 per truckload.
Aluminum containers (beer cans) are trading at approx $0.665 per lb or $26,600.00 per truckload.
China is not the reason we are burying or burning cash. Its the system: single-stream recycling costs money to sort and degrades material values because of contamination and trash.
China did not want our trash, and I do not blame them.
But this is an opportunity. Manufactures - right here in the US - are in massive need of these materials = US products, US jobs
A town of 25,000 people is burying or burning approx $500,000 per year - on average , across the above five materials
Yes, there is a good argument to reduce our use of single-use plastics, but the material exists today - so let’s not bury or burn it, let’s monetize it.
The Tulsa metro area is currently burning the majority of their materials because their only single-stream sorting facility had a fire and is inoperable for 7 months. Approx $21 million of value = poof! gone!
Burning is not the solution. Rethinking the system is.
My company, Replenysh, built tools for the town of Bristow (population 4,000+ about 30 minutes outside Tulsa) to mobilize, collect, and monetize their materials - starting in February of this year.
Bristow has collected 13 tons (of landfill-bound materials) and raised hundreds of $ for a local charity.
$0 startup costs
$0 fixed costs
2 weeks to launch
Let’s stop burning cash, and put it in the bank account of your city, community, schools, non-profits.
Let’s get to work.”
As of today, the Bristow Replenysh Network has collected 31,346 pound of recyclable products. That’s nearly 16 tons of materials that didn’t wind up in the landfill. Nearly $1000 ($986.59) was raised for Bristow Area Social Services. Our next Replenysh drive through event will be Saturday, July 10, from 9-11:30 a.m. at Edison School.
Thank you for your support of this program.
Kris Wyatt
918 645-6935