Attached is your PO for deliveries of recyclables during January 2022.

The value of recyclables again dropped significantly this month.  Every paper and most plastic grades suffered large price decreases.

There is no relief in sight for the port delays.  The Port of Oakland and San Francisco have almost come to a complete stop.  And, all ports are suffering from more worker shortages due to resurgence in COVID-19 positive tests from the Omicron variant.  While this variant does not cause as much serious illness, it is highly contagious and causes more worker absences due to quarantine requirements.

These port delays again caused paper prices to drop this month.  Also, we typically see paper prices drop with the Holiday surge flooding the market with more inbound volume.  Considering the combination of port delays and Holiday volume, you would expect paper prices to drop even more than they did.  However, snow and icy weather mitigated some of that decrease.

The snow and ice late last month and early this month, significantly decreased inbound.  As many of you know, route trucks could not pick up the blue bins in many residential areas.  Additionally, the weather kept truckers off the roads, and paper mills could not pick up material.  If you remember last month, every domestic mill was full of inbound paper or had more than adequate inventory at its facility.  But, the week-long weather issues quickly ate into mill inventory.  This issue created a very short-term supply shortage which kept paper prices from dropping as much as they normally would with port delays and Holiday volume.

Again this month, we saw a big drop in HDPE Natural and HDPE Color pricing.  Plastic container manufacturers continue to baulk on paying inflated prices of post-consumer recycled material. We expect plastics pricing to level off in coming months as it approaches levels similar to pre-COVID times.

Metals remained relatively flat to down slightly.  These markets have been the one stabilizing factor in recent months.

During these challenging times, we will always strive to obtain the best pricing available and to provide you the best possible service.  We hope you enjoyed the Holiday season and look forward to partnering with you in 2022.It is our pleasure to work with you to recycle material and to protect our environment.  We appreciate you and thank you for your business.

Stay Safe!

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