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The recycling but is interesting. I was not aware of this aspect but have heard from other nations that they no longer accept containers full of plastic rubbish

The recycling but is interesting. I was not aware of this aspect but have heard from other nations that they no longer accept containers full of plastic rubbish.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Yeah, even in Europe this is happening at a massive scale. Romanian border checks often uncover dozens or even hundreds of tones of plastic, textile, rubber garbage and e-waste coming from countries like France, Germany and the UK, falsely marked as "recycling" or "raw materials" in the paperwork, which are definitely not recyclable or usable, but will end up in some Romanian landfill operated by some shady unscrupulous business owner who even burn the trash sometimes, causing masive air pollution. I heard the same is happening in other countries, such as Turkey. It hit me that many rich countries get their so called "green-ness" by paying poorer, more corrupt countries, to offshore their environmental damage, while globally the impact is still the same, but as long as it's not in their back yard, it counts as being green. https://euobserver.com/news/151622 https://euobserver.com/news/151622
- paganel 4y ago
  > operated by some shady unscrupulous business owner who even burn the trash sometimes, As a guy living in Bucharest I can confirm that unfortunately that stuff is really happening. It's kind of crazy when you think about it, i.e. the externality of regularly intoxicating about 2 million people with smoke that has the smell of some chemical trash so that some people further West can check the "we've done our part! we've recycled!" checkbox. All this while literally putting money in the Italian Mafia's pockets, as articles like this one [1] can attest to (in Romanian, but Google Translate can help). [1] https://psnews.ro/groapa-de-gunoi-de-la-glina-de-la-afacerile-cu-mafia-siciliana-la-redeschiderea-pregatita-de-udmr-focar-de-infectie-pentru-localnici-670992/ https://psnews.ro/groapa-de-gunoi-de-la-glina-de-la-afaceril...
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    Yeah, a lot should be coordinated at EU level to stop this practice. For example, if one country finds illegal trash trying to be imported at its borders, then the country of origin should bare part of the environmental fine in order to encourage self policing and environmental responsibility at the source instead of putting all the burden of policing at the poorer target countries since as it stands right now, western EU countries "get greener" by pushing their trash to Romania, and then scold Romania at the European Commission for being too polluted lol. However, here's a major issue I found in the link you shared (translated to English via DeepL): "The landfill in Glina [Bucharest, Romania] is a health hazard for citizens and the European Commission recognized this a few years ago. According to the law, landfills must be at least 1000 meters away from people's homes, but the one in Glina is only 70 meters away. The National Environmental Guard has never thoroughly checked the entire area, and there is evidence that hazardous waste may also be hidden there. Underneath the mountains of rubbish that have risen up near Bucharest no one knows what is really hidden and how much damage is being done to the land in that area. In 2017, environmentalists warned that there was even cyanide pollution at Glina that could reach Bucharest. Prosecutors also opened an investigation after it was discovered that a Romanian company was discharging cyanide waste at the Glina dump, but these cases never reached final decisions because the trials were far too long, bogged down in courtroom proceedings and the facts were time-barred." The problems I see here are two fold: One, the Romanian authorities can't be bothered to police what's happening meters away from the capital city, where all the government institutions and politicians are. And two, it seems like whenever something foul gets uncovered, the Romanian justice system is so incompetent, that nothing happens in the end and the perpetrators get away scot free on technical failures of the system, which only serves to attract and encourage further criminal activity of this nature. This is a systemic failure on the Romanian side of epic proportions and needs to be addressed ASAP.
    - kavalg 4y ago
      It's not just the Romanian system that has these issues. We have similar issues in Bulgaria too. There was some social movement in the past to replace the chief prosecutor, but to no avail. Political parties in the parliament seem to be backed by some financial circles and voting doesn't seem to have any long term effect on the general state of matters (less than 40% voted at all at this year's elections). Non-compliant bottom up/grassroots political movements are dealt with using different tools, ranging from discreditation campaigns in media, to "embrace and extend" and finally brutal suppression using the government power structures.
- klysm 4y ago
  The global impact is even worse than dealing with it responsibly locally, often severely so.
- badpun 4y ago
  Same in Poland. And the "landfills" are just random plots of land, often very near high-density areas. The gangsters dump the waste in there, collect the money from their Western clients and disappear before the waste is discovered and police gets involved. Quite often, it's real nasty stuff (very toxic chemicals) and cleanup of one such site costs tens of millions of euros.
- Acinyx 4y ago
  > It hit me that many rich countries get their so called "green-ness" by paying poorer, more corrupt countries, to offshore their environmental damage, while globally the impact is still the same, but as long as it's not in their back yard, it counts as being green. Shit rolls downhill, don't forget that a lot of stuff imported in Romania is produced in China, partially because their environmental rules are even less strict than places like Romania. In the last decades around here (the Netherlands) they have started burning more an more trash in an effort to stop using landfills, produce energy and to lower the amount of these corrupt streams going through poorer countries. I think some Nordic country even had to massively import garbage as they didn't produce enough.
- kavalg 4y ago
  same in Bulgaria
noobermin 4y ago
Once I learned about it, I have never since recycled and have encouraged others not to recycle. The whole thing now is basically a gimmick and a great example of the 90s style thinking that believes touches around the edges will solve climate change. If governments want to make an impact on trash pollution on the ecosystem reduce really is the only thing that should be pushed.
- otikik 4y ago
  I still separate my trash because even though my plastic will probably end on the landfill, my municipality does process organic materials into compost, and plastic added to the mix burns CO2 on the separation plant. But yes, if it all ends up in a landfill anyway where you live sorting out the trash is a waste of effort
  - yurishimo 4y ago
    This depends on the country though. Here in the Netherlands, it's extremely expensive to dispose of things in the "general trash" bin. Recycling on the other hand, is essentially free (at least in my village). Organic waste is not free (except during the holidays!), but it's an order of magnitude cheaper than the general waste.
    - nirimda 4y ago
      Yes but this just changes which bin the stuff is put into. The organic bin next to my apartment in Germany always has plenty of plastic in it. The stuff that actually gets put into the packaging bin vs the general waste bin seems to be completely random, to the extent that I can see it. (Glass and paper bins mostly contain glass and paper.)
      - cinntaile 4y ago
        This is sometimes solved by requiring pre-paid see through bags. If the garbage man notices something that shouldn't be in there, it's not collected.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Yeah, China famously stopped accepting it iirc, or India? One of them anyways. Call me a conspiracy thinker, but I'm confident it was part of an international scam; companies in western European countries claim to recycle things, encourage consumers to separate their waste. They process it, bundle it up, and get a checkmark for having recycled it. But then it gets exported and put in landfills or just burned. It would've been better for the environment (largely speaking) it was just landfilled or burned in the country of origin. I don't think garbage exports / imports should be a thing.
- rjh29 4y ago
  No need for conspiracy, plenty of evidence that's exactly what happens.
- badpun 4y ago
  It would be best if exporting trash was banned and countries couldn't just pay others to dump their trash and toxic waste into ground or rivers.
  - spacebanana7 4y ago
    We should be exporting trash from fragile environments to sturdy ones wherever possible, even when national boundaries need to be crossed. Australian landfill waste should go to the outback rather than rainforests, Chinese waste should go to their western deserts and tropical Africa should export waste to Saharan Africa to reduce the impact on wildlife.
    - jaggederest 4y ago
      Broadly agree that we should be shipping waste to robust ecosystems, but I differ on where that is. Generally speaking deserts are more fragile than high moisture ecosystems, though. Cryptobiotic crusts can take hundreds of years to form, and even a small disruption can destroy them until they reform. More robust ecosystems reform readily, like hardwood and softwood secondary growth forests in the US, for example. They can quite happily grow back in a few decades on top of a clay capped landfill.
more_corn 4y ago
Plastic has never been recyclable. We used to tell ourselves the myth (with gleeful assistance from plastic manufacturers) and ship it to China so it was out of sight. They played along for a while until they finally gained enough clout to stopped taking it. I believe they term it as a ban on importing garbage.

The recycling but is interesting. I was not aware of this aspect but have heard from other nations that they no longer accept containers full of plastic rubbish.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

Yeah, even in Europe this is happening at a massive scale. Romanian border checks often uncover dozens or even hundreds of tones of plastic, textile, rubber garbage and e-waste coming from countries like France, Germany and the UK, falsely marked as "recycling" or "raw materials" in the paperwork, which are definitely not recyclable or usable, but will end up in some Romanian landfill operated by some shady unscrupulous business owner who even burn the trash sometimes, causing masive air pollution. I heard the same is happening in other countries, such as Turkey. It hit me that many rich countries get their so called "green-ness" by paying poorer, more corrupt countries, to offshore their environmental damage, while globally the impact is still the same, but as long as it's not in their back yard, it counts as being green. https://euobserver.com/news/151622 https://euobserver.com/news/151622

paganel 4y ago
> operated by some shady unscrupulous business owner who even burn the trash sometimes, As a guy living in Bucharest I can confirm that unfortunately that stuff is really happening. It's kind of crazy when you think about it, i.e. the externality of regularly intoxicating about 2 million people with smoke that has the smell of some chemical trash so that some people further West can check the "we've done our part! we've recycled!" checkbox. All this while literally putting money in the Italian Mafia's pockets, as articles like this one [1] can attest to (in Romanian, but Google Translate can help). [1] https://psnews.ro/groapa-de-gunoi-de-la-glina-de-la-afacerile-cu-mafia-siciliana-la-redeschiderea-pregatita-de-udmr-focar-de-infectie-pentru-localnici-670992/ https://psnews.ro/groapa-de-gunoi-de-la-glina-de-la-afaceril...
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Yeah, a lot should be coordinated at EU level to stop this practice. For example, if one country finds illegal trash trying to be imported at its borders, then the country of origin should bare part of the environmental fine in order to encourage self policing and environmental responsibility at the source instead of putting all the burden of policing at the poorer target countries since as it stands right now, western EU countries "get greener" by pushing their trash to Romania, and then scold Romania at the European Commission for being too polluted lol. However, here's a major issue I found in the link you shared (translated to English via DeepL): "The landfill in Glina [Bucharest, Romania] is a health hazard for citizens and the European Commission recognized this a few years ago. According to the law, landfills must be at least 1000 meters away from people's homes, but the one in Glina is only 70 meters away. The National Environmental Guard has never thoroughly checked the entire area, and there is evidence that hazardous waste may also be hidden there. Underneath the mountains of rubbish that have risen up near Bucharest no one knows what is really hidden and how much damage is being done to the land in that area. In 2017, environmentalists warned that there was even cyanide pollution at Glina that could reach Bucharest. Prosecutors also opened an investigation after it was discovered that a Romanian company was discharging cyanide waste at the Glina dump, but these cases never reached final decisions because the trials were far too long, bogged down in courtroom proceedings and the facts were time-barred." The problems I see here are two fold: One, the Romanian authorities can't be bothered to police what's happening meters away from the capital city, where all the government institutions and politicians are. And two, it seems like whenever something foul gets uncovered, the Romanian justice system is so incompetent, that nothing happens in the end and the perpetrators get away scot free on technical failures of the system, which only serves to attract and encourage further criminal activity of this nature. This is a systemic failure on the Romanian side of epic proportions and needs to be addressed ASAP.
  - kavalg 4y ago
    It's not just the Romanian system that has these issues. We have similar issues in Bulgaria too. There was some social movement in the past to replace the chief prosecutor, but to no avail. Political parties in the parliament seem to be backed by some financial circles and voting doesn't seem to have any long term effect on the general state of matters (less than 40% voted at all at this year's elections). Non-compliant bottom up/grassroots political movements are dealt with using different tools, ranging from discreditation campaigns in media, to "embrace and extend" and finally brutal suppression using the government power structures.
klysm 4y ago
The global impact is even worse than dealing with it responsibly locally, often severely so.
badpun 4y ago
Same in Poland. And the "landfills" are just random plots of land, often very near high-density areas. The gangsters dump the waste in there, collect the money from their Western clients and disappear before the waste is discovered and police gets involved. Quite often, it's real nasty stuff (very toxic chemicals) and cleanup of one such site costs tens of millions of euros.
Acinyx 4y ago
> It hit me that many rich countries get their so called "green-ness" by paying poorer, more corrupt countries, to offshore their environmental damage, while globally the impact is still the same, but as long as it's not in their back yard, it counts as being green. Shit rolls downhill, don't forget that a lot of stuff imported in Romania is produced in China, partially because their environmental rules are even less strict than places like Romania. In the last decades around here (the Netherlands) they have started burning more an more trash in an effort to stop using landfills, produce energy and to lower the amount of these corrupt streams going through poorer countries. I think some Nordic country even had to massively import garbage as they didn't produce enough.
kavalg 4y ago
same in Bulgaria

noobermin 4y ago

Once I learned about it, I have never since recycled and have encouraged others not to recycle. The whole thing now is basically a gimmick and a great example of the 90s style thinking that believes touches around the edges will solve climate change. If governments want to make an impact on trash pollution on the ecosystem reduce really is the only thing that should be pushed.

otikik 4y ago
I still separate my trash because even though my plastic will probably end on the landfill, my municipality does process organic materials into compost, and plastic added to the mix burns CO2 on the separation plant. But yes, if it all ends up in a landfill anyway where you live sorting out the trash is a waste of effort
- yurishimo 4y ago
  This depends on the country though. Here in the Netherlands, it's extremely expensive to dispose of things in the "general trash" bin. Recycling on the other hand, is essentially free (at least in my village). Organic waste is not free (except during the holidays!), but it's an order of magnitude cheaper than the general waste.
  - nirimda 4y ago
    Yes but this just changes which bin the stuff is put into. The organic bin next to my apartment in Germany always has plenty of plastic in it. The stuff that actually gets put into the packaging bin vs the general waste bin seems to be completely random, to the extent that I can see it. (Glass and paper bins mostly contain glass and paper.)
    - cinntaile 4y ago
      This is sometimes solved by requiring pre-paid see through bags. If the garbage man notices something that shouldn't be in there, it's not collected.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

Yeah, China famously stopped accepting it iirc, or India? One of them anyways. Call me a conspiracy thinker, but I'm confident it was part of an international scam; companies in western European countries claim to recycle things, encourage consumers to separate their waste. They process it, bundle it up, and get a checkmark for having recycled it. But then it gets exported and put in landfills or just burned. It would've been better for the environment (largely speaking) it was just landfilled or burned in the country of origin. I don't think garbage exports / imports should be a thing.

rjh29 4y ago
No need for conspiracy, plenty of evidence that's exactly what happens.
badpun 4y ago
It would be best if exporting trash was banned and countries couldn't just pay others to dump their trash and toxic waste into ground or rivers.
- spacebanana7 4y ago
  We should be exporting trash from fragile environments to sturdy ones wherever possible, even when national boundaries need to be crossed. Australian landfill waste should go to the outback rather than rainforests, Chinese waste should go to their western deserts and tropical Africa should export waste to Saharan Africa to reduce the impact on wildlife.
  - jaggederest 4y ago
    Broadly agree that we should be shipping waste to robust ecosystems, but I differ on where that is. Generally speaking deserts are more fragile than high moisture ecosystems, though. Cryptobiotic crusts can take hundreds of years to form, and even a small disruption can destroy them until they reform. More robust ecosystems reform readily, like hardwood and softwood secondary growth forests in the US, for example. They can quite happily grow back in a few decades on top of a clay capped landfill.

more_corn 4y ago

Plastic has never been recyclable. We used to tell ourselves the myth (with gleeful assistance from plastic manufacturers) and ship it to China so it was out of sight. They played along for a while until they finally gained enough clout to stopped taking it. I believe they term it as a ban on importing garbage.