[ad_1]
China is tired of taking garbage from America.
This sentence may or may not be true in a metaphorical sense, but it is absolutely true in a literal sense. According to numerous reports recently published in the US media, the decision by the Chinese government to ban waste imports has caused a nuclear disaster in which thousands of cities have been forced to cancel their recycling programs. and to dump additional waste hazardous dumps and, in the worst case, incinerate more waste, with devastating consequences for the quality of the air and water of the United States.
the New York TimesIn a recent report, Fiona Ma, California treasurer, warned that "we are currently experiencing a crisis in the recycling movement." WBUR, of Boston, reports that in Mbadachusetts, where cities have to offer recycling services, municipal officials are struggling to find out how to pay for something that previously paid for it. "An investigation by Cable finds that while "conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes, plastic bottles, jars of yogurt and other items in recycling bins … half of these recyclables were loaded in trucks, driven into a giant incineration plant and burned. " The the Wall Street newspaper, observes that "from Australia to Japan, from New York City to Hong Kong, garbage collectors are forced to make fun of these recycling bins for which we have all been trained to fill".
All these badyzes attribute the chaos of recycling to "the national sword", a decision made by China in January 2018 to ban the import of almost all plastics and paper. Before this policy change, "nearly 70% of global plastic waste was shipped to China, or about 7 million tonnes a year," according to NPR.
The recycling trade, in which Chinese companies have paid a heavy price for global plastic and paper waste, has scored some of China's biggest fortunes, including Nine Dragons founder Zhang Yin, China's first female billionaire. . Containers that transported Chinese-made products to the United States and sent them back empty were filled with garbage from American cities, companies like Nine Dragons who are looking for recyclable materials with the help of a hand. -d "cheap Chinese work.
The more I learn about the bizarre dynamics of the recycling industry, the more it reminds me of the nineteenth-century opium trade, in which Britain compensated for its own dependence on Chinese tea by fueling a Chinese dependence on a drug grown in his Indian colony.
But over the past five years, the economics of the recycling sector have failed. A problem, as the NPR notes, is that a large part of the plastic imported into China was contaminated by elements making recycling difficult and expensive: paper, food waste and plastic film. Often, plastic that could not be recycled was illegally thrown into China, adding to the already considerable pollution problems in the country. Chinese labor costs have increased, making waste sorting more expensive. And as the Newspaper note, an unexpected culprit was fracking: a sharp drop in the cost of natural gas from 2014 meant that it was suddenly cheaper for manufacturers to produce new plastic than using recycled materials.
China's crackdown in 2018 reduced last year's 4% waste imports to 1% of imports in 2016. Vox The ban has forced some of the world's largest companies, including Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Nestle and PepsiCo, to adopt reusable packaging and grocery chains, while chains such as Trader Joe's are struggling to eliminate plastic.
All of this reinforces an argument on which we have often insisted Fortune: The most urgent challenges in the world, especially those relating to the protection of the environment, can only be solved in collaboration with China. We will tackle recycling and a host of other environmental issues at the Fortune Global Forum on Sustainable Development in Yunnan province in September. Conference details here.
At the same time, I urge you to read this insightful badysis of the Chinese electric vehicle industry by Stanford Law School speaker Jeffrey Ball, who will join me as co-chair of the Yunnan Forum. The forum is by invitation only, but Jeff and I would be happy to receive your nominations for speakers and participants.
More news on China below.
Source link
