Materials management is no longer just a local operations issue. Scrap trade policy, landfill siting, and recycling contamination all reveal a system under strain from geopolitics, geography, and consumer trust, where decisions made far from the curb increasingly shape what happens to material at the curb.
In the news
This Week in Waste
The US-China Scrap Trade Relationship Is Being Rewritten Around Critical Minerals
The old China trade story (National Sword, mixed paper and plastics bans) has given way to a new one: the US is now debating whether to restrict exports of high-grade copper scrap rather than send it overseas. US copper scrap exports to ASEAN nearly doubled between 2024 and 2025 as material increasingly routes through Southeast Asia before reaching China, and Washington is weighing retention policies to keep premium scrap grades domestic starting as early as 2027. A separate Council on Foreign Relations report argues the US should treat critical minerals recovery, including recycling of end-of-life electronics, as a national security priority rather than a pure commodity play.
Key takeaway: Materials management is both an environmental issue and a resource and national security issue. What began as a story about China refusing US recyclables has evolved into stronger US consideration for keeping its own recyclables at home.
Sources: Resource Recycling ·
SMM Copper Scrap Market Insight
From SWEEP: China’s Import Ban is a ‘Sputnik’ Moment for Global Recycling →
The recommendations from this piece, written in the days after China’s 2017 National Sword announcement, still hold: treat the loss of the Chinese scrap market as a wake-up call rather than a crisis to wait out. SWEEP argues the US needs a “space race” style push to rebuild domestic recycling infrastructure into a modern closed loop system.
Is the US Actually Running Out of Landfill Space?
This debate resurfaces every few years and remains unresolved. SWANA and EREF have argued that the “landfill crisis” is a regional problem, not a national one, pointing to roughly 62 years of national capacity when accounting for larger, more efficient mega-landfills. But geographical landfill capacity is sharply uneven: the Northeast has lost close to 30% of its capacity and some states are within five years of running out, while 22 states have decades of space remaining. State and regional landfill shortages are pushing waste farther from where it’s generated, and long-haul transport by truck or rail is driving up overall waste management costs. Miami-Dade County now spends an estimated $65 million a year hauling trash out of county, up from $41 million two years ago. That transport increases burdens on communities along the route who had no say in the arrangement: in Fort Pierce, Florida, officials describe daily truck traffic, odor, and road wear from trash railed in from Miami-Dade, and in Elk County, Pennsylvania, residents are fighting a proposed rail spur to a landfill over noise, property values, and derailment risk.
Sources: Hoodline ·
WLRN ·
Times Observer
From SWEEP: “Time is Running Out: The U.S. Landfill Capacity Crisis” →
SWEEP’s own analysis was among the first to break out this data by region, and remains a useful counterpoint to the “no crisis” framing from industry leaders.
Recycling Contamination and Consumer Confusion Are Still the System’s Biggest Weak Point
The Recycling Partnership’s newly released 2026 State of Recycling Report found that 79% of recyclable plastics, paper, glass, and metals never reach processing facilities at all, and only 60% of people know food does not belong in the recycling bin. Meanwhile, the federal PACK Act and California’s SB 343 “Truth in Labeling” law represent two competing approaches to fixing the problem — one through a single national labeling standard, the other through strict state-level recyclability thresholds — and packaging companies have already sued to block SB 343 before it takes effect in October.
Sources: PlasticsToday ·
Earth911
Get Involved
Join SWEEP
From scrap trade policy in Washington to landfill sitings in rural Pennsylvania to contamination at the curb, the forces shaping materials management are increasingly global — but the impact always lands locally. Join SWEEP and help set the standard for what good waste management actually looks like.
| ⬥ Join SWEEP Today |