China Bans Foreign Waste – What Will Happen to the World's Recycling?

https://theconversation.com/china-bans-foreign-waste-but-what-will-happen-to-the-worlds-recycling-85924

by kungfudoi • 9 years ago

73 63 9 years ago

ggm2• 9 years ago

China invests in Africa. This is both an economic (coltan, and trade) decision, and a political (influence, votes in the UN) decision.

Now, it looks like it might be a shrewd environmental decision, if you are a province in China with a huge pollution problem from plastics recycling. Voila! export the problem to Africa. .. (not saying this is good in any sense, but it would make sense as an operating model: its what we did to them, so they do it to the next emerging colonial empire)

powerapple• 9 years ago

Why the fxxk you drew conclusion like this? It has nothing to do with Chinese domestic wastes. It is about wastes used to ship to China. There are many other countries has been the dump field for west for so many years. India for example. Yes, Africa. If China has been processing imported wastes for a very long time, they should be able to process domestic wastes for some time. I am Chinese, and I get very annoyed that for any title with 'China' in it, you just draw negative conclusion from it which has nothing to do with the article.

King-Aaron• 9 years ago

I think you're overreacting to a point that the other guy wasn't making.

ShabbosGoy• 9 years ago

I am Chinese, and I get very annoyed that for any title with 'China' in it, you just draw negative conclusion from it which has nothing to do with the article.

In general, I've found that Western media outlets are gratuitously negative to certain countries - especially if they were under colonial control at some point.

Colonialism never really died, they just rebranded it as "globalism".

ggm2• 9 years ago

I'm not sure I understand why you think this is anti Chinese? All China is doing is recapitulating colonialism. I expect there are good social and economic reasons to stop polluting Chinese provinces with imported wastes, but Chinese businesses will want to retain profit and trade.

Therefore relocating recycling businesses overseas makes sense. China has now deep roots in Africa primarily aimed at extraction of raw materials but also for sale of goods and services (Huawei for instance supply African mobile operators with turnkey solutions) so inviting African economies with low barriers to pollution and lax labour laws to bid for contracts to reprocess waste is surely normal?

Isn't that why the UK and Europe export the waste to China?

Britain used to make ships. Then ship making moved to Portugal and then Poland, and then Korea. Trade moves to low labour cost economies. As China tightens pollution and labour law the cost of processing waste will rise until it's more economic to do it somewhere else. I just expect Chinese business to defiantly retain a role in that.

The votes in the UN yes, that was perhaps unfortunately said. I apologize. If I said China was merely redressing systemically acquired imbalances by investing in Africa and the Pacific islands,and the quid pro quo was mutuality, would that be better?

I love China. I visit it frequently, lots of Chinese companies invest in Australia, our economic future is closely tied. I am tired of dissembling in this space. What China is doing is not immoral: it's amoral, no different to what the west did, does.

dang• 9 years ago

Url changed from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-bans-foreig..., which points to this.

imron• 9 years ago

what will happen to the world’s recycling?

It will move to another country whose leaders value money over the environment. China now has enough money and clout to say no.

There are plenty of places that don't.

andrewstuart8• 9 years ago

Reposted from a few days ago... incredibly relevant to this post.

I urge you to stop believing in recycling.

Here's some things to think about:

The "packaging" industry, is in fact a nice way of saying the "garbage manufacturing" industry.

At least in Australia, the "recycling industry" is owned by the "packaging industry". Hmmm.. why is that? It put it to you that the garbage manufacturing industry has in fact worked out how to "own" the environmental movement by pushing "recycling" as the "balance" to the spewing forth of garbage from the packaging industry. The packaging industry must be laughing so hard at how easily it has owned the environmental movement. Have you ever wondered if all that packaging you put in your recycle bin gets recycled? It's a question worth thinking about.

I have come to believe that recycling, which environmentalists embrace deeply as a core value, is in fact just a smokescreen that allows everyone to feel OK about the garbage manufacturing industry creating an unending quantity of plastics that have made their way into every nook and cranny of our ecosystem.

Please, stop believing in recycling.... if you recycle, then you do not question the unbelievable, and unrecyclable, quantity of plastic packaging that you consume. One you stop believing in recycling, you start to ask the question, "why the heck do we permit the packaging industry to create this unstoppable flow of garbage" Seems to me that world MUST eventually move to a solution which is a set of standardised containers for all products, which are durable, washable, have a refund value attached, and may have paper corporate brand stuck on them after being washed.

Another strategy worth bringing forward is the idea of "garbage brands"..... showing off all those precious brands but in their true context... as garbage in our creeks, rivers and oceans, drains and footpaths. Once brands start to become associated with garbage, they might rethinkg whether they want their names and logos on the digusting mess destroying our environment.

Please, stop believing in recycling and the smokescreen will clear and you will start to ask questions about the packaging industry and our community/commercial system that supports it. Asbestos, tobacco, sugary foods, packaging - all industries that have fooled us into believing things that are wrong but served their own ends. The packaging industry has fooled us into thinking that it is OK because recycling exists.

DanBC• 9 years ago

which environmentalists embrace deeply as a core value

Environmentalists say "reduce, re-use, recycle" - recycling is the last, worst, option in this phrase. Reducing the stuff you buy being the first, best, option.

andrewstuart8• 9 years ago

I'd be more interested in your response to my fundamental premise that the unending, infinite flow of packaging needs to stop.

Everybody doing "some reducing" isn't going to stop an entire industry dedicated solely to creating garbage.

All the graphics designers who design it, all the printers who print it, all the plastic manufacturers who make it, all the software developers who write software to support all these industries, and the brands who buy the garbage/packaging to put their products in. They're all filling every nook and cranny of this earth with garbage.

It's not about "using less". It's about a war that we need to have with every element of the packaging/garbage creation/recycling industry.

And it has to be a war, because the packaging/garbage creation industry isn't going to go without a fight. WE pay them to create garbage by buying products that are delivered in garbage.

We have to hold the brands to account who ship their products wrapped in garbage headed for the ocean.

But all those garbage creation jobs must go. All that garbage creation money must go.

And the smoke screen that we all use to feel OK about packaging... the smoke screen/lie that we call "recycling", it has to go too, because that's what it legitimizing the packaging industries ruin of our earth.

nash_tr• 9 years ago

agree with so much here. just curios about the “packaging industry owns recycling industry in aus” statement. Where can i find out more about this?

andrewstuart8• 9 years ago

https://www.visy.com.au/

It is both the biggest packaging and recycling company in Australia.

And has the magnificently ironic slogan of "For a better world."

If they didn't have the recycling side of the business, you might say "For a garbage world".

But it's impossible to hold them to account isn't it because they are "recycling".

And now we need to ask "Is recycling real, or is it just garbage being shipped to some other country?"

pilsetnieks2• 9 years ago

In all that rant of yours, you don't mention once why recycling doesn't work, just implore us to stop believing in it. Why is that?

andrewstuart8• 9 years ago

It doesn't work because everywhere you look the world is full of garbage.

I went on a holiday to the pacific recently and stayed on a remote island and walked around it and every 10 feet - literally - was a plastic drink bottle.

Is that not enough to convince you that there's a problem?

timthelion3• 9 years ago

It doesn't work because the packaging isn't recycled. You're not allowed to use post-consumer plastic to make food grade PP [1]. So %0 of food packaging is recycled as food packaging. Sometimes it is turned into insulation or polyester for clothing, but it rarely if ever is turned into hard plastic again. PP can only be recycled about 3 times as hard plastic before the mechanical properties become unusable and the plastic comes out visibly brittle and rough. ABS is similarly hard to recycle, and colored plastics cannot be turned into white plastic which can be used to make colored parts.

The only recycled plastic in your life is:

1. polyester clothing 2. building materials 3. agricultural materials

3 is pretty ironic. You're allowed to grow a plant in a recycled container, but once you harvest that plant, it must be stored in a food grade container which cannot be recycled.

[1] http://nextek.org/portfolio/food-grade-recycled-pp/

grecy• 9 years ago

Absolutely.

It's refreshing to spend time in the undeveloped world and see how glass bottles are re-used hundreds or thousands of times, how many things you buy don't come wrapped in plastic and how people simply buy less crap.

In order of importance - Reduce, re-use, recycle.

The developed world is just now catching on to the worst of the three.

averagewall3• 9 years ago

I understand the sentiment and sometimes keep jars that look like they might be useful. But if you're not actually forced into that life forever, it's not really fair to judge it as desirable. I appreciate having time to do intellectual work without the burden of tedious manual labour tasks all day - did they also wash their clothes by hand? The human brain is capable of far more than that. What a waste the 3rd world is in not tapping as much of its potential.

justlearning123• 9 years ago

Undeveloped, really?

keypress2• 9 years ago

I agree that packaging needs a rethink.

Our household waste stream is quite low (UK). Less than a small carrier bag per week of what basically boils down to plastic wrapping and lids. Most of which is unnecessary.

All our food wastes, cardboards, poor quality papers, (pretty much anything the worms will eat) ends up in the compost heap. Nature is a good recycler in that regard.

Our recycling bin is mainly full of glass and metal. These packaging materials do feel rather extravagant, but at least they are simple mostly non-composite materials. I still don't understand how and why it's worth recycling a Tetrapak.

While I agree many plastics are probably better burnt for energy rather than shipping them to China; buying into incinerators just perpetuates this rubbish packaging industry.

Simple compostable packaging is certainly a swaying factor for me when buying a food item.

ptman• 9 years ago

If it is in a compost heap instead of a compost container, then rats will be feasting in addition to worms.

averagewall3• 9 years ago

Another reason to not recycle is that recycling is to protect local environments from immediate short term damage. A bigger environmental problem is global warming and I don't think recycling help with that at all. If anything, it seems like it would make it worse by reducing the amount of oil needed to make plastic, thus keeping the demand and price low so more of it can be burnt cheaply instead.

How about we convert as much oil as we can into plastic, bury it in the ground for a few 100s of years and stop worrying?

doesnt_know• 9 years ago

I don't disagree with the point you are trying to make, but how else would you expect the concept of recycling to work?

So, let's take Visy, in the context of this post, they are in the business of waste disposal, recycling, and packaging. For their packaging business, they turn raw materials into packaging. For cardboard, that's either dead trees or recycled/reprocessed cardboard.

So they either pay for brand new raw materials or recycled materials. They decide to skip the middle man and setup a plant, negotiate contracts with councils/governments and take peoples waste so they can turn it into packaging.

That's what recycling is. It's not magic. If there is no one/business on the other end to consume or process it, it's not recycling, it just garbage and goes to a land fill.

I'm just using cardboard as an example because it's easier to grok (trees/cardboard etc), but over the last 5 years there has literally been occasions where the price of brand new cardboard has been lower than recycled cardboard. So yes, sometimes this the recycling industry is all sorts of fucked, but if you don't have industry/business/consumer on the other end of this recycling equation it's worthless.

andrewstuart8• 9 years ago

We need standard, reusable packages sizes, refundable, washable, can be labelled with paper stick on branding.

Maybe 150 of them as a guess.

Legal requirement to use them.

wiineeth• 9 years ago

Probably will shift to india

Myrmornis• 9 years ago

Very oddly written article. The author seems to assume that the US and EU are above doing whatever China does with the recycled plastics.

ztjio• 9 years ago

They are above paying subhuman wages for extreme exposure to dangerous and toxic environments for extended periods of time. Yes.

basicplus2• 9 years ago

Now maybe, but they weren't during the western industrial revolution and well beyond! Geez read some history!

timthelion3• 9 years ago

They are above it. In a turn up their noses and leave it to the third world to do the dirty work sort of way. Burning plastic is regulated in the EU, using recycled plastic is basically forbidden due to the risk of contamination with lead and other toxic chemicals. It's like the king who is above cleaning his toilet.

China Bans Foreign Waste – What Will Happen to the World's Recycling?

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