State environmental officials urge residents to continue to recycle amid changing market conditions Roy Cooper, Governor Michael S. Regan, Secretary Release: Immediate Contact: Laura Leonard Date: May 20, 2019 Phone: 919-707-8223 RALEIGH – The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality is providing technical assistance and guidance to local recycling programs affected by changing market conditions and cost models for recycling. “North Carolina has a thriving recycling industry that manufactures recyclable materials into new products, reduces greenhouse gases and stimulates the state’s economy,” said DEQ Secretary Michael Regan. “While changes in prices for recycling have highlighted the problem of contamination in our recycling and a need for strengthened domestic markets, DEQ is available to help.” The state has developed a back-to-basics education approach to help communities inform their citizens to recycle only those items that recovery facilities can manage. Single-stream recycling programs that emphasize the collection of cans, bottles, cardboard and paper recover the highest tonnages most efficiently. However, when residents put non-recyclable items in their recycling cart, it causes contamination of the recycling mix. Educating residents about which items go into the recycling container is the most effective way to recover the most recyclable material and avoid contamination. Prior to 2018, China accepted low-value classes of recyclables that domestic markets did not accept. Last January, China restricted the amount of lower quality recyclables that the country would import. Under the new policy, known as National Sword, Chinese markets no longer accept foreign bales of unprocessed plastics and mixed paper, and any processed paper and plastic bales must not exceed 0.5 percent contamination. Material recovery facilities (MRFs), which sort out different categories