By Mariana Pennybacker, Walt Whitman High School & Bethesda Green Leadership Academy Intern
Have you ever thought about what happened to that plastic water bottle you used once before throwing it in a recycling bin? Probably not. But chances are, that water bottle made ended up halfway around the world, in China. Before January 1st, 2018, China was the primary destination for the recycled material and waste of many developed Last year, China halted the import of ‘foreign garbage’, banning 24 types of waste, including recycled plastics and paper (de Freytas Tamura, 2018). From 1992 up until last year,China imported recycling and garbage from other countries and processed the raw materials to fuel the country’s manufacturing boom (Kiley Watson). In 2017 alone, the U.S. exported 372,000 metric tons of plastic to China, and according to Marian Chertow, Associate Professor of Industrial Environmental Management, Yale University, nearly half of all plastic waste exports ended up being recycled in China (Kiley Watson, 2018). So, without China to deal with the rest of the World’s recycled waste, where does all of that recycled material go?
As of New Year’s Day, last year (the day the ban went into effect), the U.S. and many other Western nations have had to deal with their own recycled waste. This means that domestic recycling facilities are now processing a much greater volume of recycled material than before. While most urban areas have recycling facilities capable of handling large volumes of waste, the sheer volume of waste has impeded recycling operations across the country. Republic, a recycling company that handles “over five million tons of recyclables nationwide” every year, has had to divert thousands to tons of recycled paper to landfills since China implemented the ban on foreign waste (Albeck-Ripka,2018). Western states have been hit particularly hard, as they relied the most on China for recycling (Albeck-Ripka, 2018). In some communities, like Grant Pass, Oregon, residents are encouraged to recycle as usual, despite the fact that much of what they recycle now ends up in landfills due to inadequate processing facilities (Albeck-Ripka, 2018). David Biderman, the executive director of the Solid Waste Association of North America, cites these instances as cause for concern, calling China’s ban, “a significant disruption occurring to U.S. recycling programs” (Albeck-Ripka, 2018). Now the question arises, what will the U.S. and those Western nations previously reliant on China do with the thousands of tons of recycled material they once exported? This question has a few answers.
- Develop the technology to better sort our recycling, thereby lowering the contamination rate to meet China’s standard of 0.5 percent impurity by volume (de Freytas-Tamura, 2018). Meeting this standard would allow the U.S. to resume the export of our recycled waste, but it could be years before we figure out how to reduce contamination to meet China’s standard.
- Identify other countries to take in our recycled waste, and we’ve already found some contenders. Vietnam, Malaysia,and Thailand have begun importing foreign waste, and “the U.S. sent 137,044 metric tons [of garbage] to Vietnam” last year (Kiley Watson, 2018). However, these countries lack advanced waste management systems and are incapable of processing the massive volume of garbage once managed by China (Kiley Watson,2018).
- Reduce and reuse. Reduce consumption of plastic and paper as much as you can (because plastic and paper can only be recycled so many times before the material degrades to the point it can no longer be used and has to be thrown away). Swap once-useable plastic sandwich bags for reusable Tupperware containers, read news online, instead of the newspaper, start keeping reusable grocery bags in your car, pick out a nice stainless-steel water bottle, buy fresh produce instead of prepackaged food in plastic wrappers.Reuse by buying from companies that use recycled materials in their products,and simply reusing any plastic containers that can’t be replaced with paper or cardboard.
So, if you think you’re doing enough for the environment just because you recycle, you’re probably not. That plastic water bottle you recycled may have ended up in a landfill or as litter out in the environment, just like 91% of all plastic, according to National Geographic (Parker, 2017). Perhaps for your 2019 New Year’s resolution, aim to do more for the environment by reducing your consumption of paper and plastic.
References
Albeck-Ripka,L. (2018, May 29). Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or
Maybe Not. Retrieved December 12, 2018, from The New York Times website:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-landfills-plastic-papers.html
ddeFreytas-Tamura, K. (2018, January 11). Plastics pile up as china refuses to take the west’s recycling.
Retrieved November 30, 2018, from The New York Times website:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china-recyclables-ban.html
Kiley Watson, S. (2018, June 28). Now that china has refused to recycle the west’splastic, where will
they go? Retrieved November 30, 2018, from NPR website:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/28/623972937/china-has-refused-to-recycle-the-wests- plastics-what-now
Parker L. (2017, July 19). A Whopping 91% of Plastic Isn’t Recycled. RetrievedDecember 12, 2018, from
National Geographic website:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris- environment/
Profita, C., & Burns, J. (2017, December 9). [Recycling Chaos In U.S. As China Bans’Foreign Waste’].
Retrieved November 16, 2018, from NPR website:
https://www.npr.org/2017/12/09/568797388/recycling-chaos-in-u-s-as-china-bans-foreign-waste
