China’s Ban on Importing Foreign Waste
Jun. 2nd, 2018 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitouthttp://www.scmp.com/news/china/money-wealth/article/2147219/china-launches-fresh-campaign-against-trash-smuggling
I’m not seeing any of this in US / EU coverage of the ban — their focus is purely on how OMG we’re going to have to figure out something else to do with the recyclables and it is costing us money and we are having to landfill some of this stuff and aaaawwwwww.
This morning, I asked myself, Self, has there been a gradual increase in stockpiled foreign waste and the ban is to work through the backlog? I could find no evidence of such an increase. In fact — as you can see in that above article — some companies involved in “recycling” are going to a lot of effort to smuggle in “fresh” supply of “recyclables”. And that’s the worst stuff, too. They are doing it to get at the rare metals that are super expensive to mine, but are rarely responsible corporate environmental citizens in terms of what they do to extract those rare metals, never mind the fact they have an alarming tendency to burn or dump the rest of the e-waste that they don’t otherwise want to deal with.
China has been experiencing some unrest, shall we say, related to environmental contamination and pollution. As their population becomes more prosperous (yay!), like everyone else who experiences abundance, they generate more trash (oh, bummer). China seems to be trying to force their enterprises which previously bought “recyclables” internationally to instead retool to deal with domestic “production” of “recyclables”.
On the whole, this is laudable, if inconvenient for richer nations who have become accustomed to sending our “recyclables” to China and then not paying any further attention to what happens to it from there. As long as that was the cheapest / most profitable way to dispose of ... well, everything, that’s how we disposed of everything. Welcome to opportunity for beneficial change. It’s never any fun in the moment.
I’m not seeing any of this in US / EU coverage of the ban — their focus is purely on how OMG we’re going to have to figure out something else to do with the recyclables and it is costing us money and we are having to landfill some of this stuff and aaaawwwwww.
This morning, I asked myself, Self, has there been a gradual increase in stockpiled foreign waste and the ban is to work through the backlog? I could find no evidence of such an increase. In fact — as you can see in that above article — some companies involved in “recycling” are going to a lot of effort to smuggle in “fresh” supply of “recyclables”. And that’s the worst stuff, too. They are doing it to get at the rare metals that are super expensive to mine, but are rarely responsible corporate environmental citizens in terms of what they do to extract those rare metals, never mind the fact they have an alarming tendency to burn or dump the rest of the e-waste that they don’t otherwise want to deal with.
China has been experiencing some unrest, shall we say, related to environmental contamination and pollution. As their population becomes more prosperous (yay!), like everyone else who experiences abundance, they generate more trash (oh, bummer). China seems to be trying to force their enterprises which previously bought “recyclables” internationally to instead retool to deal with domestic “production” of “recyclables”.
On the whole, this is laudable, if inconvenient for richer nations who have become accustomed to sending our “recyclables” to China and then not paying any further attention to what happens to it from there. As long as that was the cheapest / most profitable way to dispose of ... well, everything, that’s how we disposed of everything. Welcome to opportunity for beneficial change. It’s never any fun in the moment.