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China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere
- ribrars 8y agoMore like there was a huge trash problem and they don't want it anymore... how is them handing the world a problem when the root cause of the problem is unsustainable packaging and recyclables?
- Rotdhizon 8y agoThe title is either purposefully misleading to get views, or just to express anti-china sentiment.
- rmshea 8y agoI think it should serve as a wake up call for the rest of the world. Sweden has had incredible success with recycling in recent years, most notably touting the fact that they import other countries' trash to use in their recycling plants [1]. How can we recreate Sweden’s model in the US and have our own solution to the trash problem instead of giving it to China? [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-s-recycling-is-so-revolutionary-the-country-has-run-out-of-rubbish-a7462976.html https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-s-recycling... EDIT: Fixed wording and added source. Sweden is buying other countries' trash, not selling theirs.
- LargeWu 8y agoI thought Sweden was burning it for energy, not recycling it.
- reaperducer 8y agotouting the fact that other countries in fact buy their trash. How can we recreate Sweden’s model Isn't this exactly the problem? Sweden isn't taking care of its own trash, but instead selling it to China, just like the US and many other countries?
- sciyoshi 8y agoI think GP meant to say that Sweden is buying other countries' trash: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-s-recycling-is-so-revolutionary-the-country-has-run-out-of-rubbish-a7462976.html https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-s-recycling...
- rmshea 8y agoYes, thank you for the source. I've fixed my wording in the original post.
- ars 8y ago> Sweden has had incredible success with recycling in recent years That line is more false than true. For the most part they are not recycling their trash, they are incinerating it. Additionally Sweden is tiny. Trash there is brought to local recycling centers with 6 to 8 or more different bins, and people are expected to sort their trash. How would you do that in the US? Trucks with 8 compartments? Where would you even keep that many different trash cans? The US is very large, you can't expect people to transport their recycling.
- qqg3 8y agoAm in the US, transport my recycling right now as there is no pickup in my county.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoThey drastically underbid western recyclers for a long time, economically disincentiving other better solutions. Ideally, western governments should have seen this coming and fixed the problem earlier, being a failing of capatalism unchecked.
- Rotdhizon 8y agoLong story short: China has been importing trash from many countries for the past two decades. Now they won't import it anymore, and these countries aren't prepared to dispose of the trash themselves. The 111m-ton figure is an estimate by 2030, the current amount is nowhere near that number.
- yoran 8y agoGood for them. Let the rest of the world fix the problems they're creating themselves.
- asdsa5325 8y agoChina is the one creating the plastic in the first place. Don't act like they have a moral high ground.
- r00fus 8y agoWho's buying from the Chinese? It's not like their fault that other people want to buy their stuff. Look to the supply chain of who's putting plastic spoons/forks in restaurants in the US/EU and you'll probably find lots of profit from non-chinese companies.
- yoran 8y agoNo one is talking about morals here. They are just limiting how much of someone else's garbage they are cleaning up. They are creating it, that's true. But the buyers (i.e. developed nations) know very well that the stuff they're asking them to produce is harmful for the environment, so their hands are equally dirty here. When demand goes down, so will supply.
- zanmat0 8y agoIf no one was buying it, would they still be creating it?
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- mistrial9 8y agomuch duplicity all around on this obviously-important topic .. here is a blog (discontinued) specifically on Electronics topic https://web.archive.org/web/*/ewasteinsights.info/* https://web.archive.org/web/*/ewasteinsights.info/*
- JulianMorrison 8y agoWe need to stop making things out of plastic, where any alternative exists. The stuff is going to be the asbestos of the 21st century. Microplastic has been vastly, vastly underrated as a problem. All my lifetime the attitude has been that plastic takes eons to degrade and pulverize, but when it does, the problem of unsightly or dangerous litter is presumably finished. Now we're seeing the opposite: plastic dust is a poison sponge that bioaccumulates and has got absolutely everywhere.
- fredley 8y agoI predict it won't be long before using non-biodegradeable plastic in any packaging or short-lived product will be banned. It's outrageous that everything is packaged in material that will almost certainly not be properly recycled, and end up in landfill or the ocean.
- r00fus 8y agoBioplastics / biodegradable plastics are not a panacea: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/bioplastics.html https://www.explainthatstuff.com/bioplastics.html
- vkou 8y ago> Unfortunately, not all bioplastics compost easily or completely and some leave toxic residues or plastic fragments behind. Some will break down only at high temperatures in industrial-scale, municipal composters or digesters, or in biologically active landfills (also called bioreactor landfills), not on ordinary home compost heaps or in conventional landfills. This is not that big a problem. The solution to it is municipal composting, instead of chucking it in your back yard. Bioplastics aren't a panacea, but biodegradable ones are. We want durable materials that don't biodegrade. That's why we use plastics. Ideally, there should be a way - some catalyst, or some environment in which they do degrade. Industrial composting of biodegradable plastics is just that. Unfortunately, it does not really solve the microfiber problem. We can't make clothing out of biodegradable plastic.
- ethicsengineer 8y agoThis puts into context all of the laws that have been passed recently banning plastic
- seanalltogether 8y agoSeems like Northern Africa would be a pretty logical place for disposing waste. Lots of unused desert land very close to the sea for easy access by barge.
- XJOKOLAT 8y agoLogical. Yes, to a prick.
- mtw 8y agoIsn't there a lot of desert land in the US as well? and easier access than going all the way to Northern Africa
- dawnerd 8y agoYep and some is already being used as landfills.
- justinator 8y agoDeserts aren't inhospitable. They're still ecosystems for animals that perhaps do not want their groundwater (perhaps) tainted by a landfill. Problems are already happening with pretty terrible materials that have been dumped, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/25/radioactive-waste-dump-fire-reveals-nevada-troubled-past https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/25/radioactive-...
- eli 8y agoWho is going to pay to ship it there? The whole recycling supply chain is based on selling waste to China.
- Bluestrike2 8y agoBarge access isn't the problem so much as deep-water port capacity is as most waste is transported via cargo container. It takes years to build up the infrastructure needed to handle the increased garbage and transport it to massive landfills, even if you've got cheap land for them. I'd expect that it'd stress existing African port capacity, even if we're only talking about a portion of the waste that was previously sent to China. With luck, we'll see improvements in recycling technology and investment to compensate. In the meantime, the bulk of it's already going to landfills with all of the problems that entails.
- contactanother 8y agoThat's hilariously ironic because China is the biggest exporter of plastics. 1.) China: $17.9B (24.7% of exported plastic items) 2.) Germany $9B (12.4%) http://www.worldstopexports.com/plastic-item-exports-country/ http://www.worldstopexports.com/plastic-item-exports-country... plastics are now drowning the ocean, choking fishes (which the Chinese fisherman has a habit of overfishing, even going out to other countries' sea to fish). not to mention coral diseases, as well as microfibers ingested by humans. And China just dump plastics into their rivers and out into the ocean. letting the other countries take care of them. Also, interestingly, China's boom in the early 90s came from the fact that they lacked materials, and they had to take other countries waste in order to use the waste for materials for production. Now that China's boycotting waste, the other southeast asian countries are picking up the slack (and waste), and growing their own industrial capabilities. That's why now manufacturers usually have two or three different factories in different countries, lessening dependence on China, and ready to switch when they need to (like the impending $400 billion tariff on China)
- gowld 8y agoI don't see the irony. World consumers asked for plastic. China provided it, and doesn't want to take it back.
- bilbo0s 8y agoYep. We designed the products, and the packaging. Then ordered that exact combination to be manufactured in China. You don't get to order a balsa wood table, of your own design, from a woodworker, and then complain that they won't take the balsa wood back when you want to throw the flimsy table away. Especially when you specifically asked them to make the table from balsa wood.
- 628C6l0 8y agoYou must be Chinese spy! Get him!
- ars 8y ago> plastics are now drowning the ocean Virtually all of that comes from just a small number of nations that dump trash in rivers, and the rest from lost fishing gear. The ocean plastic is not from household plastic use/trash in places that might recycle it. So instead of working on recycling, maybe we should work on getting those countries proper trash service.
- oh-kumudo 8y agoMaybe start from stopping using plastic
- squozzer 8y agoWe could (and maybe should) demand in trade deals that if you ship us plastic, you take it back. Easy to enforce? I dunno - why not require country of origin for packaging? But assuming that won't happen - sounds like an opportunity for US jobs. Plastic might make decent bricks for building.
- aleksei 8y agoShouldn't rather the entity importing the plastic take responsibility for disposing of it? As you say it might even create jobs, but I'd say it should befall the consumer to take care of the waste they produce in any case, instead of simply shipping it away.
- mtw 8y agoIs it me or there's been recently China articles with a negative bias recently on hacker news?
- asdsa5325 8y agoDo you expect us to speak kindly of their social credit system?
- txru 8y agoWith a looming trade war feature the US and China as primary actors, it's pretty understandable. I also don't think this article really has too much of a negative bias, aside from the title itself.
- onetimemanytime 8y agohow is this a negative article? If I had to decide it's positive. No more imported trash means a certain level of development
- contactanother 8y agoPretty easy to be negative on China when all the news come out of there are: dictatorship, imprisonment millions in concentration camps and brainwashes them, builds artificial islands and claim ownership of seas not even close to their land, blatantly disregards WTO rules and closes off its market to others, hacks and steals other countries and their companies IP, threatens to attack a democratic Taiwan every day, censorship of their citizens, threatening censorship of other countries about China or its concentration camps, depletes fishing supplies in other countries, floods the ocean with plastics, props up dictatorships in other countries, etc etc etc.
- 628C6l0 8y agoNuke China.
- contactanother 8y agoYou literally said you're Chinese, in one of the comment a month ago.
- baxtr 8y agoThis is actually great news. Western people will have to get innovate about avoiding garbage, plastic in particular. Oceans will intake less waste (Yes, I’m optimistic about this one)
- p3llin0r3 8y agoWestern nations aren't the problem, it's developing countries with poor waste infrastructure and industrial vessels. https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting-the-oceans-the-most/ https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting...
- justinator 8y agoYeah, we're the problem. It's OUR plastic that China isn't allowing in anymore.
- 628C6l0 8y agoNo we're not the fucking problem. We are the good guys.
- justinator 8y agoI would love to think the world is so black and white, but we export plastic to China and now, they don't want it. So. It's always dangerous to think one is on the right side of history.
- 628C6l0 8y agoYou, sir, are exhibiting dangerous relativistic tendencies. It's imperative that this sorry excuse of a country be wiped off the face of the earth
- baxtr 8y agoIt is a very delicate question of responsibility. Developing countries pollute the oceans most, but the source of waste is - to a large degree - western nations. So probably, the best way to put it, is to say that both are responsible. However, now things have changed, with China at least.
- eli 8y agoI feel like this is one of the most important underreported stories today. It's a massive, sudden change that is having ripple affects on the entire global supply chain. We've written quite a bit about it on Waste Dive: https://www.wastedive.com/news/what-chinese-import-policies-mean-for-all-50-states/510751/ https://www.wastedive.com/news/what-chinese-import-policies-... California is particularly hard hit and is likely to relax laws about how much recyclable material is allowed to be sent to landfills. There's nowhere else for it to go.
- jseliger 8y agoA useful post. Have you read the Adam Minter book Junkyard Planet? https://jakeseliger.com/2018/04/10/junkyard-planet-adam-minter https://jakeseliger.com/2018/04/10/junkyard-planet-adam-mint.... It's a deep and excellent look into how the junk supply starts in the United States and goes (went, now, I guess) to China. "Waste" made sense for China when the country was poor and desperately starved for raw materials. Now the country is less poor; we are going to have to somehow subsidize the recycling of waste (expensive) or landfill it (terrible for the environment).
- RealityVoid 8y agoIs landfilling truly terrible for the environment? It seems to me as though if a concentrated area were used for landfilling, that area is ruined, but overall the surface is small in the grand scheme of things, so it should have a relatively small impact. Can anybody expand _why_ landfills are bad? It certainly seems better than simply leaving junk everywhere.
- bmer 8y agoLandfills are not sustainable, and are best used as a stop gap measure. It might seem like we have lots of easily accessible empty land right now, but eventually easily accessible land is going to become harder to find. It seems that it would be wise to come up with a sustainable solution, rather than assuming we can rely on a non-renewable resource forever. That being said, why can't volcanoes be used as some sort of a landfill?
- Svoka 8y agoBefore building industry and infrastructure to support it this is how my SimCities made money. Is this what we're seeing here?
- justinator 8y ago"Plastic Recycling" always seemed like such a scam. Very little of it can be turned into the same thing it was, before. Most of it can only be downcycled to an inferior product (and then it's mostly the end of the line). To think we've simply shipped it off to another country to deal with the problem is criminal. Another part of my childhood where the details were far less idealistic than the big picture.
- imhoguy 8y agoExactly this. As China bans to buy European "recyclable waste", then it is imported into countries with legal loopholes e.g. to Poland [1], Serbia, Italy[2] and so on and somehow landfills start to burn accidentally. Even if the law changes [3], there will be other places where a penality for such criminal act is lower than cost of recycling or proper storage. 100% plastic recycling is a dream. Don't want to even start story about toxic fluids recycling... accidentaly leaking into rivers. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8p7wnr/major_danger_for_europeans_health_garbage_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8p7wnr/major_danger... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_death_(Italy) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_death_(Italy) [3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-waste/poland-vows-to-fight-illegal-waste-dumps-after-toxic-fires-idUSKCN1IU1QZ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-waste/poland-vows-...
- samatman 8y agoIt basically is. The most reasonable approach to plastic waste is controlled incineration for power. That means at least the oil we dig up performs some yeoman duty as a container or padding before being turned into work and greenhouse gas. A bit of recycling on the margins, perhaps. Biggest thing would be to stop making plastic products that fall apart into biotoxic pieces.
- yread 8y agoOne of the unintended consequences of that is more waste import to Poland, which increased taxes on it to limit it which prompted owners of the dumps to set them on fire https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8p7wnr/major_danger_for_europeans_health_garbage_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8p7wnr/major_danger...
- vermontdevil 8y agoAll these recycling options included with various municipal waste management districts are going to have to change. Lots of hard decisions ahead.
- cashsterling 8y agoI am not an expert but I am a PhD chemical engineer and I have though about this issue for years and years. My 0.02... Short term --------------- a) give houses smaller trash cans and charge a lot for bigger trash cans. Town I live in already does this... at first I was like "wtf with this tiny trash can... I can throw away like one, two bags of trash tops per week"... well, now my household of 4 averages one bag of half full bag of trash per week. we do more composting and more recycling. b) double down on recycling programs and sorting. Short- to Mid-term -------------------- c) we should be burning 100% of our actual trash in localized facilities. We trade the negative of immediate CO2 green gas emissions but we get: -- some power in return -- reduced diesel fuel use (at like 4 miles a gallon)... assuming the trip to local burn facility is shorter than out of landfill -- huge reduction methane release from landfill, -- 100% elimination of continued landfill pollution and water table pollution by god knows what (drugs, plastics, leaking batteries, etc. The CO2 effluent stream can be captured and processed in many interesting ways. The CO2 is so clean it can be used for beverage or biotech service and/or feed for a CO2 to polymer (plastic building block) plant. Many modern burn facilities burn so hot [and completely] they could be certified to deal with bio-hazard and chemical weapon destruction. They have gas scrubbing systems advamced enough that only N2, O2, and CO2 are emitted from the plant (NOx, SOx, etc. level are parts per billion levels)... no complex chemical species, no metals, leave the plant through the gas effluent. We were/are doing this... but all this NIMBY nonsense is leading to some collectively destructive group-think... many folks don't want to see burn facilities near their house and there is a lot of money to be made in our current trash mismanagement system. Actually, most of our thinking is collectively destructive group-think so "what's new?" Edit: http://www.lacsd.org/solidwaste/swfacilities/rtefac/commerce/default.asp http://www.lacsd.org/solidwaste/swfacilities/rtefac/commerce... I visited that facility in the 90's... it was great. Now it is closing... not sure if it being replaced. Long-term ------------ d)We need packaging laws and taxes that address waste caused by excessive/unnecessary packaging... particularly for commercial/industrial use. e)Society needs to refocus our value system to value simplicity and localized self-sufficiency: local fresh food over packaged/frozen goods, more reusable (and infinitely recycle-able) locally filled glass containers f) localized recycle-to-manufacturing pipelines. Imagine a future where you could take polyethylene scrap down to a local facility get it 3D printed into something you or someone else can use (or get a spool of PE line to use in your own 3D printer at home).
- lopmotr 8y agoWhat's wrong with putting it in landfills? The world has no shortage of wasteland. If we can afford to ship it to China, can't we spend the same money driving it on trucks into a nearby desert or valley?
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoThere is a huge assymetry between shipping to and from China. Since China exports so much, those containers often come back empty. In finding something to fill these empty containers on the way back, some smart guy (proabably in China) came up with garbage. They’ll think of something else to fill the containers with, but it isn’t that uneconomical to shop garbage to China given the circumstances.
- jzl 8y agoThere was a better article about this earlier this year in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china-recyclables-ban.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china-recyclables-b... Corresponding HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719
- hevad 8y agoPlastics aka petroleum are a huge problem, but yoga pants (microplastics) aka performance synthetic fabrics are a even larger problem.
- microdrum 8y agoAnother inhumane and illiberal policy from China. And these guys are supposed to be the future?
- Simulacra 8y agoHave you ever seen the ship-breaking in Bangladesh? It'll all likely go there with absolutely catastrophic consequences.
- rapnie 8y agoSo what is the likelyhood that rich countries - not having the recycling capacity to deal properly with their own waste - find some other, much poorer countries (other than the ones mentioned) to use as their garbage dump? Seems likely to me. Is this already happening?
- ssss11 8y agoMay sound silly but could we send it into space instead of burying it? Surely it could be sent on a trajectory to burn up at the sun or another planet’s atmosphere. I guess the obvious issue is cost, are there others?
- ilyagr 8y agoIt's counterintuitively hard to send something into the sun. You have to cancel out all of Earth's velocity. http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/07/heres-why-we-cant-just-rocket-garbage-into-the-sun http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/07/heres-why-we-cant-just...
- coss 8y agoWhy not just rocket it to space? Sounds like a good business to be in for SpaceX.
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y agoSeriously? I’m going to have to follow the rules and charitably assume that you’re serious. Rocket fuel is expensive, the process of launching and recovering the vehicle is expensive, and every kg lifted is incredibly expensive. You would also need to launch it somewhere, or you’d just be launching garbage into a decaying orbit. You might as well dispose of garbage by burning it on a pile of diamonds.
- dang 8y agoYou've crossed into incivility repeatedly in your comments. Could you please stop doing this? Re-reading the site guidelines might help: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- coss 8y agoThere's literally an infinite number of places to put it? We have reusable rockets? I'm curious what the cost would be for the fuel to do it. What's the typical dollar to kg ratio?