US plastics scrap exports suffer year-on-year decline

United States – Export volumes and price levels for scrap plastics dispatched from the USA experienced a month-to-month increase towards the end of last year, according to latest data. However, cumulative export totals for 2016 continued to lag behind those for 2015, reports Resource Recycling.

In October last year, the most recent month for which figures are available, US scrap plastics exports totalled 365.65 million pounds (166 000 tonnes) for a 3.1% increase over September.

However, when compared to October 2015, the volume of plastic scrap shipped abroad was down by 1.9%. Meanwhile, the weighted price of recovered plastic exports was 17.20 cents per pound in October, up 4.5% compared to September but 1.8% lower than in October 2015.

The 3.54 billion pounds (1.6 million tonnes) of scrap plastics exported from the USA across the first 10 months of 2016 represented a decline of 8.1% from the previous year’s January-October period.