(NewsUSA) – One of the lingering images of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States is store shelves stripped clean of paper products — mainly paper towels and toilet paper.

As communities across the United States struggle to find new end markets for recyclables affected by China’s import restrictions, one commodity is bucking the trend: food and beverage cartons.

California’s familiar milk cartons, long stamped with the chasing-arrows recycling logo, are suddenly at the center of a high-stakes test of what “recyclable” really means. A shift in how the state’s ...