To date the impact of the National Sword initiative has been very intense on all parts of Urban Impact’s operations. Example of the specific impacts include:
- A dramatic downward price correction on all grades of Paper and Plastics.
- A dramatic slow down in our throughput and production of our processing plants.
- Increased scrutiny of all inbound deliveries.
- Active communication to all suppliers on any quality issues observed, loads downgraded and fees associated with quality issues passed to the inbound customer.
- Increased labour expense to manually sort materials received.
- Development of new signage for Urban Impact’s collection bins and offered to all suppliers to assist them in communicating contaminants and prohibitive materials to their customers.
- Communication to customers if contaminants are visible at the time of pick up.
- Intensifying the material audit process and frequency of audit
National Sword Long Term impacts
It is of course difficult to accurately state the specific long-term impacts of this type of market disruption will be. We feel that the recycling market can anticipate some long term lasting impacts such as:
- Emphasis on the recycling stock quality
- Re investment into processing plants to improve the mechanical extraction of contaminants to meet the new industry standard of less than .5% contamination of recycled material (current industry acceptable contamination standard is 2%).
- Put it all in a bin (referred to as Single Stream or Mixed Recycling) is an easy collection solution but it is likely not going to be the least expensive when processing fees are calculated.
Thank you for your attention and understanding. We are working hard to ensure that we have active end markets for all grades of material.
