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This article was posted in Politics & Other Controversies, but I thought it also belonged here. Definitely renewed my commitment to avoiding single-use plastic packaging, which is an area where I have been slacking off.
LONDON — Ever since China announced last year that it no longer wanted to be the “world’s garbage dump,” recycling about half of the globe’s plastics and paper products, Western nations have been puzzling over what to do when the ban went into effect, which it did on Jan. 1.
A lot of that plastic came from China. You look at all the plastic products around your house and quite a bit say “Made in China” on them.
From hair dryers to spatulas to combs to plant pots to clothes hangers to shower curtains to televisions to folding chairs to AC units to brooms. They’re all made of plastics and all came from China.
I agree that it's very difficult to live without plastics. My efforts have been focused on reducing my consumption of single-use plastic packaging, and I had slacked off over the last year. This latest development has motivated me to do better in 2018.
Not all of it. A company here in Alabama makes a lot of the precursor chemicals.
The concept of financial responsibility from creation of a product to its ultimate destruction and/or recycling is smart on many levels. Too many brownfields have had to be cleaned or cordoned at public expense.
A lot of that plastic came from China. You look at all the plastic products around your house and quite a bit say “Made in China” on them.
From hair dryers to spatulas to combs to plant pots to clothes hangers to shower curtains to televisions to folding chairs to AC units to brooms. They’re all made of plastics and all came from China.
A lot of that plastic came from China BECAUSE the west has been sending it to China as plastic garbage and China has been recycling it into other products and sending it back to the west. Again and again and round and round it goes ...... until now.
I anticipate that if China sticks to its guns and refuses to accept any more plastic garbage from the west then in the long run there won't be the same amount of plastic products being exported from China back to the west. The west will have to find another way to recycle their own garbage and hopefully learn how to stop being such a spoiled rotten throw away society.
A lot of that plastic came from China BECAUSE the west has been sending it to China as plastic garbage and China has been recycling it into other products and sending it back to the west. Again and again and round and round it goes ...... until now.
I anticipate that if China sticks to its guns and refuses to accept any more plastic garbage from the west then in the long run there won't be the same amount of plastic products being exported from China back to the west. The west will have to find another way to recycle their own garbage and hopefully learn how to stop being such a spoiled rotten throw away society.
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This doesn’t make sense. China needs that plastic back in order to recycle it into a manufactured product. China is not going to stop making plastic products. It’s their livelihood.
You make it sound like they are doing us a favor by sending us plastic goods to sell to us. They are not.
In the United States, the new rules mean more garbage could stay at home. While that could be good news for some recyclers, it could also mean more waste in the country’s landfills, according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a lobbying group based in Washington.
Recyclers might also have to upgrade their facilities to handle the waste, leading to higher costs for American municipalities and taxpayers, said Adam Minter, a recycling expert and author of “Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade.”
“Without China, there will be less recycling in the United States, and it will cost more,” Mr. Minter said.
We all (Western countries) should be doing this: Sweden
Sweden is so good at recycling that, for several years, it has imported rubbish from other countries to keep its recycling plants going. Less than 1% of Swedish household waste was sent to landfill last year or any year since 2011.
I also need to add, that while traveling to Europe and visiting several countries year after year, I didn't see such extensive packaging of goods as in the USA.
Every year in the US, the paper, aluminum, glass, plastics and other recyclable material we throw away would be worth $11.4 billion if it were recycled instead. Less than 14 % of plastic packaging, which is the fastest-growing form of packaging, gets recycled. We have one of the lowest overall recycling rates of any developed nation.
In Europe, food companies are responsible for the packaging they put out into the world. Yet the very same big multinational corporations that agree to pay for collection of their packaging in Europe, Canada and elsewhere, refuse to take that same responsibility in the US. Many of these companies also fight bottle and container deposits, which have proven to be the single most successful way to boost recycling rates in the US. https://www.nrdc.org/experts/peter-l...ackaging-waste
This doesn’t make sense. China needs that plastic back in order to recycle it into a manufactured product. China is not going to stop making plastic products. It’s their livelihood.
You make it sound like they are doing us a favor by sending us plastic goods to sell to us. They are not.
Read the article. China is complaining it is getting too much back. It will still need to get them back, just not at the rate it is getting. They are also complaining that many of the waste contains hazardous materials and are not properly cleaned before they receive it.
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