Thread by @AdamMinter

A long-ish thread on what happens when a major news outlet reports on a multi-billion dollar industry without bothering to look at industry data, first.

I am, of course, talking about the NYT's recent reporting on America's so-called recycling crisis.

I'll start with this widely circulated March 16 story by @mcorkery5.
nytimes.com/2019/03/16/bus…

The problems start even before the story does. Note the dek below the headline, which makes the erroneous claim that China "is no longer accepting used plastic and paper."

The truth? In 2018, China imported around 40% of all U.S. used paper exports.

That chart, by the way, was generated by the very smart folks at @rrecycling , from U.S. Census Bureau data. It's embedded in this excellent article.

resource-recycling.com/recycling/2019…

Scroll down that article and you'll also learn that the NYT's claims about plastics aren't right, either. True, China's reduced its plastic recyclables imports significantly. But it did not end them.

Nonetheless, @mcorkery5 proceeds on this incorrect assumption to explain America's current recycling problems:

That passage includes two errors. First, as we've seen, China remains a big buyer of U.S. recyclables. And second, there's little evidence that Chinese officials actually imposed import restrictions because of environmental concerns (see what they do, not what they say).

Indeed, so far in 2019, the Chinese government has issued permits authorizing levels of recycled paper imports that *exceed* its 2018 recycled paper imports. resource-recycling.com/recycling/2019… Is that how a rational actor seeks to control recycling-related enviro issues? Nope.

Of course China has reduced its recycling imports as of Jan 1, 2018. Nobody disputes that. The economic impact, esp on exporters of used plastics and mixed paper (think: junk mail), has been significant.

But don't forget that China's demand for U.S. recyclables has been in decline for years. Here's a chart showing U.S. exports of scrap recyclables to China - including stuff placed in blue bins - between 1994 and 2018. Note they went into terminal decline in 2011!

Why? Lots of reasons. The rising cost of Chinese labor. The long and steady decline of low-end Chinese manufacturing. The rise of low-end SE Asian manufacturing. And, most immediately, retaliatory tariffs (25%) and the Chinese economic slowdown.

The latter two reasons - tariffs and the slowdown - are the likely reasons why Chinese recycled paper importers aren't taking advantage of their government's generous new 2019 permits to import recycled paper. resource-recycling.com/recycling/2019… it's not the "ban," it's the economy.

And that's an old story --- global demand for raw materials (and that's what the contents of your blue bin are - raw materials) waxes and wanes, shifts and slides, with the growth and decline of manufacturing economies.

In any case, the NYT's recycling reporting would be poor form for any news source. But it's particularly terrible coming from the paper of record. If the NYT says "blame China and America's dirty recycling," then local news papers with fewer resources will say it, too.

That only serves to contribute to a false narrative that recycling isn't an economically rational industry, and the current crisis is simply resolving a problem that should have been resolved long ago.

But trust me, as the great-grandson of an immigrant scrap recycler, I can tell you that the recycling industry has seen other crises (see chapter 13 of this fine book: amazon.com/gp/product/160…). Would be nice if the NYT pointed that out.

Instead, we see the NYT's narrative get legs. For example, in the NYT, and @mcorkery5's interesting March 22 NYT story on the renaissance in American cardboard manufacturing. nytimes.com/2019/03/22/bus…

That story posits two reasons for the cardboard revival: the rise of Amazon and other cardboard-hungry e-commerce companies, and ....

Obviously, that's false. In fact, as @rrecycling points out, U.S. used cardboard (OCC, in industry parlance) exports to China were basically steady between 2017 and 2018, while overall cardboard exports grew 27%. resource-recycling.com/recycling/2019…

In other words --- the NYT needs to rethink its explanation for the US cardboard revival.

The NYT can and should do better. At a minimum, check if there's any data available about the industries you're covering, and use it. Also, avoid the simple narrative when it comes to China-related stories; it's almost always wrong (your awesome China bureaus will back this up).

And, you know, call around when you're writing about recycling. There are lots and lots of industry people who will happily offer nuanced, complex perspectives that surprise and inform readers. End.

One last thing --- at least in the recycling press, there's been a recent and very welcome pushback against recycling narratives like the ones being published in the NYT. As usual, the wise folks at @rrecycling are leading the charge: resource-recycling.com/recycling/2019…