With China saying no to plastic waste, the world needs a new plan

A result of China's new policies: The Republic Services disposal and recycling giant is now sending 2,000 tons of recyclable paper a month to the landfill.

Last week, researchers reported the impact of China's policy changes in the journal Science Advances. The researchers studied 28 years of data from the UN Comtrade database to measure plastic exports to China, which processed a large portion of the waste and turned it into new products. By projecting the conversion rate in the future, they estimated that over the next twelve years, 111 million metric tons of waste will no longer be found in China.

"It's a wake-up call," said Amy Brooks, the senior author of the report and a PhD student in engineering at the University of Georgia. "Historically, we have depended on China to absorb this recycled waste, and now they say" No. "This waste must be managed, and we must manage it properly."

Even with global efforts to recycle plastic – especially single-use items such as bags, bottles and straws – only about 9% are reused, while most end up in landfills or contaminate the oceans, say researchers .

China first signaled that it no longer wanted to be the world's waste dump in 2013, when it decreed a temporary restriction and demanded significantly less contamination in plastic shipments than in the world. it allows the country. The so-called green fence policy was a harbinger of the permanent ban that came into effect in late 2017, motivated by China's concerns about the long-term environmental impact of its filing waste in the world.