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“A WAKE UP CALL FOR THE WORLD”
For Simon Elin, chief executive of the British Recycling Association, it’s “a tough time” his industry and country are facing just now. He does not think about Brexit, Britain trying to leave the E.U., dreaming to return to glorious times as a world power, one day soon. His colleague Arnaud Brunet, head of the Bureau of International Recycling, predicted “catastrophic environmental problems.” An assessment the London Times shared: “The world is drowning in plastic as China is shutting the door to waste.”
One year ago, Beijing informed its global trading partners via the World Trade Organization (WTO) that it would be giving up its place as the largest garbage dump on our planet—formally on January 1, and to be implemented on March 1, 2018. The ban of “Yang lagi”, foreign garbage, would, for the moment, cover 24 kinds of solid waste, including unsorted paper and the low-grade polyethylene terephthalate used in plastic bottles. The contamination, which until the ban was at 1.5 percent, can no longer be more than 0.5 percent. In other words, no grease stained pizza boxes, because they can contaminate an entire batch of recyclables. In April, China expanded the ban to go into effect later this year, to include more metals and chemical waste. A ban on an additional 32 varieties of scrap, including waste timber, is targeted for the end of 2019.
“It is very clear they don’t want material that still has to go through another recycling process,” believes Adina Adler, Senior Director for Government Relations and International Affairs of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, “they don’t want the water bottle, they want a plastic pellet that has been cleaned, separated by color, uniform in shape, and in size, that can go straight through to the shelter and can be melted straight in some new plastic product”--- refrigerators, stadium seats, printers and fleeces, along with the packaging they are shipped in. The Beijing decision did throw the global recycling industry into turmoil. Most, if not all, industrial nations of the globe did rely, for decades, on China’s acceptance of their waste. Now the awakening is developing into a nightmare. In January 2017, the U.S. exported more than 208,000 metric tons of mixed paper and nearly 75,000 metric tons of scrap plastic to China. In January of this year, China accepted just over 11,000 metric tons of mixed paper and 5,000 tons of plastic scrap.
Since they had taken the convenient method of selling its garbage to the world’s second largest economic power for granted, transferring its national pollution problems, and its waste, on cheap container ships to Asia, governments of Europe, the U.S., and Japan, felt they did not need urgently to invest in recycling methods. They even felt they could ignore landfills, and even avoid burning their national trash, which was possibly cheaper, but harmful to the environment. Ireland exported 95 percent of its plastic waste to China, which had been processing at least half of the worlds exports of waste paper, metals and used plastics. Every year, Britain did send China enough recyclables to fill up 10,000 Olympic size swimming pools, during the last five years 2.7 million tons... The U.S. exported more than 13.2 million tons of scrap paper, and 1.42 million tons of scrap plastic annually to China -- the sixth largest American export to the Asian giant. Now this, China, importer of more than 43 million metric tons of scrap iron and steel, nonferrous metals, paper and plastic (2016) reducing its import towards zero, is for Arnaud Brunet nothing less but an “earthquake.” The U.S. Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries fears that the ban will devastate the industry that supported 155,000 jobs and exported scrap worth 5.6 billion dollars to China in 2016. Now Donald Trump can transform his battle call “America First” by getting rid of his nation’s garbage at home.
A GHASTLY VISION: OUR PLANET BURIED UNDER A MOUNTAIN OF DISCARDED PLASTIC
Where to recycle or dump the waste, this is now the billion-dollar question. India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, even Turkey, seem eager to replace the Chinese, but these nations are certainly unable to deal with the volume, because they are lacking sophisticated recycling systems. The ghastly vision: OUR planet is set to be buried under a mountain of discarded plastic over the next decade and beyond. How to deal now with plastic waste which, by 2030, researchers of the University of Georgia predicted, will attain an estimated 111 million tons worldwide, plastic straws, bags, water bottles and other rubbish? The U.S. would have to deal with 37 million tons of its own waste without China’s help, a stinking challenge indeed. Already, these days, waste management industries are scrambling to find acceptable sites to stockpile garbage and scrap plastic. The figures projected are staggering, or scaring, since they predict tragic consequences for the environment, and thus for the future of our planet. In 2012, the world’s cities generated 1.3 billion tons of solid waste per year, amounting to 1.2 kilograms per person per day. With rapid population growth and urbanization, the World Bank believes municipal waste is expected to rise to 2.2 billion tons by 2025. And China will be unwilling to save the world. It will try to survive its own rubbish created by then two billion citizens.
“A CERTAIN DEGREE OF TURMOIL”
Most industrial countries were not prepared for the Chinese decision, although Beijing initiated its first restrictions five years ago through its “Green Fence” project, which was an attempt to reduce health issues like pollution in the large cities of China by insisting on bales of plastic to be thoroughly cleaned and sorted. Unusable recyclable material often ended up in China’s landfills, which had become a source of unrest in the country’s south. Simon Ellin criticized the UK government for being “asleep at the wheel” and for not reacting to the partial ban, which indicated troubles to come. In July of last year, Beijing suddenly declared to the WTO: “Large amounts of dirty wastes or even hazardous wastes are mixed in the solid waste that can be used as raw materials. This polluted China’s environment seriously.” Therefore, they decided that they would cease, or at least reduce, dramatically, their trash collection.
Environmentalists hailed Beijing’s decision as a great win for global green efforts. China’s ban, they argue, would not only clean up the country, but force other nations to better manage their own trash. Theresa May, rather preoccupied to lead the UK out of the European Union (herself threatened as prime minister by a revolt in the conservative party) pledged to eliminate avoidable waste within 25 years, a rather utopian promise for someone risking being out of office in a few months. For the time being, Mrs. May urged supermarkets to introduce plastic free aisles, where all the food is to be picked by customers, apparently to be carrying the food home in baskets made out of straw. Experts advise, as an immediate response to the crisis, to resort to incineration or landfills, a suggestion limited in some countries. Ireland’s waste levels are to reach crisis proportions following the move by China, reported The Journal, “with government sources stating that ‘there will be no more landfill sites available from next year.’” In the meantime, Brussels calls for material to be produced, consumed, and recycled within the EU. The project includes a binding target of recycling 55 percent of plastic packaging by 2030, up from 30 percent today. Brussels is also discussing a possible tax on plastic bags and packaging.
China’s decision “will send shockwaves around the world and force many countries to tackle the ‘out of sight out of mind’ attitude we have developed towards waste,” Greenpeace East Asia plastic campaigner Liu Hua said before the ban came into effect, calling Beijing’s move, “a wakeup call for the world.” The ban on foreign waste would be “controversial” the China Daily predicted since some exporting countries like the UK and the U.S. will say Beijing’s ban “will cause a certain degree of turmoil.” The E.U. tried to convince the Chinese government to agree to a slower reduction of its recycling decision, allowing the Europeans to adjust over a five-year period. China refused. Even Washington tried to pressure Beijing in the spring of this year at the WTO’s Council for Trade in Goods in Geneva.
“PLAYING WITH YOUR GARBAGE”
“China’s import restrictions on recycled commodities have caused a fundamental disruption in global supply chains for scrap materials, directing them away from productive reuse and toward disposal. We request that China immediately halt implementation and revise these measures in a manner consistent with existing international standards for scrap materials, which provide a global framework for transparent and environmentally sound trade in recycled commodities.”
–U.S. Official at WTO Council for Trade in Goods, Geneva, March 2018
China seemed to be breaching its WTO obligations by treating domestic and foreign waste differently, the U.S. representative argued. Washington, which considers China an “economic enemy,” and was preparing to impose high tariffs on Chinese goods worth 60 billion dollars, did not hesitate to accuse Beijing of employing an overly trade-restrictive policy -- just months after Donald Trump threatened to withdraw from the WTO.
Beijing answered through foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying:
“The concerns are neither reasonable nor do they have any legal basis. It’s very hypocritical of the U.S. to say China is breaching its WTO duty. If the U.S. thought, it is legitimate to restrict exports of high-tech and high-value-added products, then China’s ban on foreign waste imports was not illegal. Restricting and banning the imports of solid waste is an important measure China has taken to implement the new development concept, improve environmental quality and safeguard people’s health.”
“The Basel Convention,” Mrs. Hua Chunying additionally argued, “allows countries the right to restrict the entry of foreign waste. We hope that the U.S. can reduce and manage hazardous waste and other waste of its own…”
In the 1980’s, China grew a whole waste processing and recycling industry, at its peak importing almost nine million metric tons of plastic scrap a year, but improper handling of trash and lack of effective supervision turned the country into a major polluter. China worked hard on efforts to clean up its air, water and land, has shuttered tens of thousands of factories that contributed pollution, and pushed for greater use of renewable energy. However, a study published in March of this year by the University of Chicago found that air pollution levels across China still exceed global standards set by the World Health Organization. Global plastic exports to China could sink from 7.4 million metric tons in 2016 to 1.5 million metric tons in 2018, while paper exports might tumble nearly a quarter. The decrease will be partly due to a fall in the threshold of impurities China is willing to accept per metric ton of waste-higher standards that most countries currently cannot meet. Adam Minter, author of the book, Junkyard planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade is convinced that China’s decision on garbage imports really stinks: “Recycling is about manufacturing. If somebody doesn’t want to use those raw materials, then putting stuff in your recycling bin is doing nothing more than playing with your garbage.”
