Hobo, you might be in a safer place with your plastic collections, assuming many AZ plastics move along to Mexican processors instead of Californian export. About 25%, by volume, of everything that left California docks in 2016 for China was scrap material of some bent, according to SWANA. I haven't heard anything about how the Sword will affect CRV rates but, given the trouble that program was already seeing, I can't think it will be a good thing. But honestly, most #1 post-consumer plastic is processed domestically, at this point. There's also some hope places like Vietnam will pick up a bit of the slack. I will start talking to my plastics recyclers, the ones who do weird stuff like ABS and polycarbonate, about their immediate concerns. I had been asking months ago, when I first heard about the Sword, and everyone was basically just waiting to see what would happen.
Given how many metals/plastics/e-waste processors rely on shredding, versus d-man, the real trouble would seem to be coming from buyers and recyclers of whole units, unless you know that they are breaking things down in-house. Our primary e-waste handler does a ton of teardowns but on super low-value crap like alarm clocks and printers, they just move them along to specialist processors, many of whom export at least something. But I think for people who are shipping completely stripped product to market (as I assume many forum people are doing) it may be less of a blow than we fear.
The textiles thing has been a mess for years. Expect to see trouble at the Salvation Army. They export A LOT and with recovery rates as high as they are claiming (70-80%), a huge amount of that must be going to textiles reclamation. Their biggest competition, Goodwill, logs about 40% before export.
The real issue I see at the top of the food chain is that, in addition to seeing contamination cutoffs as low as three-tenths of a percent, the Chinese are issuing fewer import licenses in 2018 and invalidating a number of the ones which already exist. That's quite a gauntlet for recyclers to have to run. Even if a processor can meet the strict guidelines, that doesn't guarantee a slot at an overseas port. Given the incredibly short window of time for comment and critique on Sword policies, it's possible some of these licensees don't even know, yet, if they are or aren't going to be able to export.
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