The impact of National Sword on North America's front lines

With China's ban on certain types of solid waste, including various plastics and higher standard for contamination levels, North America recyclers are being affected.

The Solid Waste Association of North America released this statement in October.

Read here for our latest coverage:​ National Sword may create new trade route for plastics beyond China.

For this year's recyclers and brokers survey, which comes out May 28,we asked "What impact is National Sword having on your business?" Thirty-six firms responded, and you can check out a sampling of their comments below.

The simplified result? It's a mixed bag, depending on your business model. Some are struggling, others are shining. And many comments show that there are anecdotes to back up some of the trends industry watchers are seeing.

It was however, a year of change for many. The push to find new business or invest in equipment was the biggest positive result.The outstanding challenge is what to do with low volume, contaminate or /mixed scrap.

Overall the general feeling about National Sword was also mixed.

For the firms that responded to our survey, 24 percent reported higher volumes. Those volumes were up on average 29 percent. However, for those firms that broker material, the volumes were down 8.5 percent as compared to our 2015 report, with 12.7 fewer firms brokering at all.

As promised, here is a sample of the anonymous comments:

• National Sword has killed my business.

• We had lower volume, but, [we] invested in equipment to reprocess material we previously exported. Overall National Sword should help our business greatly.

• Huge, but our business adapted. We are shipping reprocessed [and] off-grade pellets to mainland China, and shipping post industrial scraps to other Asian countries to process.

• Purchase and export of low value items had declined. Some high end items are no longer allowed as well.

• Flooding the market with excess material. Driving value of material down due to excess. Fewer recycling alternatives with access to China being denied.

• Very little impact due to small export volume. Expectation for greater volume of domestic material available for recycling.

• It caused us to reduce intake of mixed materials and market/sell to other countries, who consume export grade materials.

• The National Sword program has not impacted us too much, but it's a wake-up call to all U.S. recyclers to start cleaning their material better, and incorporate quality control systems. This will require a capital outlay for sorting machines and wash lines to name a few. This will separate the men from the boys as far as who wants to take on the additional capital requirements to clean their ongoing plastic streams.

• We are moving most of our plastic domestically, with a small amount moving to markets in Southeast Asia.

• National Sword has motivated us to explore and open up new global and American markets. Our sales and pounds shipped overall, since National Sword. have increased company wide.

• We've been diverting our markets to other parts of Asia, [for example] Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam.

• In the short term, National Sword has greatly slowed down the growth in tub and lid recycling as the MRFs focus on correcting and improving their paper quality. In the longer term, we believe the National Sword will provide the U.S. market with additional material as MRFs install additional sorting equipment to make U.S. quality bales.

• China's National sword has benefitted our business as we recycle, reclaim and reprocess all of our materials in Canada and the U.S. We never have exported scrap to China, and by having 5 processing facilities in North America we are benefitting from the fact that the National Sword or Green Fence 2.0 has forced many domestic manufacturers, brand owners and product designers to look at their scrap PVC and do something about it on our own shores.

• National Sword has actually helped us. We are actually getting less trash and have found new domestic buyers for most of the material previously sent overseas at better prices.

• Although only a small percentage of our sales are exported to China, the cumulative affect has depressed certain commodity prices as well as demand. However, in the past six months, it appears that many Chinese processors that were operating their businesses on the mainland have relocated to other parts of Asia including Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. This has brought slightly more balanced demand to the marketplace, although prices have yet to recover to pre-National Sword levels.

• Most of [our] customers closed shop and relocated to South Asia. Some closed shop for good. Looking for new customers. More domestic and less export.

• National Sword has created opportunities as well as difficulties. We are not a large volume exporter, so pain has been minimal. Teaming up with domestic innovators has shown significant promise.

• Not too bad now. Waiting on tariffs now.