As Recycling Dwindles, Supply Chains Are Buckling

When stay-at-home orders shuttered offices across the U.S. last month, one industry was especially hard hit: toilet-paper makers. Just as consumer demand for their product surged during the lockdown, they lost access to the cheap recycled office paper that’s typically used to make toilet rolls. That induced some of the world's biggest makers to switch to pulp sourced directly from trees, adding significant costs and harming the environment.

It was one small example of the widespread disruption that the virus is causing for the recycling business, and thus for the entire economy.

Article by Adam Minter, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is the author of “Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade” and "Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale."

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