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China was the world’s biggest importer of scrap plastic, receiving close to half of the world’s global plastic waste for three decades. But serve pollution concerns prompted the country to impose a ban on plastic waste import abruptly in January 2018. This shook up the global garbage/scrap trade. With the primary importer of plastic waste out of the market, exporting countries began sending increasing volumes of scrap to Southeast Asia, with Malaysia emerging as the number one importer. Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia also picked up a lot of the slack. Malaysia’s imports rose five-fold and the Philippines’, three-fold.

The recycling crisis triggered by China’s ban could have an upside, experts say, if it leads to better solutions for managing the world’s waste, such as expanding processing capacities in North America and Europe, and spurring manufacturers to make their products more easily recyclable. Above all, experts say it should be a wake-up call to the world on the need to sharply cut down on single-use plastics.

Over the coming decade, as many as 111 million tons of plastics will have to find a new place to be processed or otherwise disposed of as a result of China’s ban, according to Brooks and University of Georgia engineering professor Jenna Jambeck. However, the places trying to take up some of the slack in 2018 tended to be lower-income countries, primarily in Southeast Asia, many of which lack the infrastructure to properly handle recyclables. Many of those countries were quickly overwhelmed by the volume and have also now cut back on imports.

 

Picture Credit : Google

For many years now, wealthier nations have been shipping their waste including paper, plastic, metal and electronic items, to developing countries, which recycle them and use them as raw material in their manufacturing businesses. For the former, it’s a cheap way to dispose of their waste, and for the latter, waste is a valuable source of income. But in recent months, the global waste trade has been facing a crisis. A growing number of countries are demanding that nations take back their plastic waste. Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia have started to send contaminated waste back to where it came from. Returning 42 shipping containers of illegally imported plastic waste to the U.K., Malaysia’s Environment Minister Yeo Bee Yin announced last month that Malaysia would take steps to ensure it does not become the garbage dump of the world. In 2019, the Philippines shipped back 69 containers of plastic to Canada that it said was falsely labelled as recyclable in 2013 and 2014.

Global trade in plastic waste is a big business. According to an estimate, from 1988 to 2016, the top 10 plastic waste exporters shipped 168 million tonnes, most of it to China. Exporting is seen as a cheaper option than sorting, cleaning, recycling or reusing it locally.

In developing countries on the other hand, recyclers line up to buy this waste and turn it into new products.

In the recent past, countries found themselves dealing with huge volumes of waste they are ill-prepared to handle. Such waste also contains a variety of materials, chemical additives and dyes that make it next to impossible to recycle. Workers who process these shipments are often exposed to hazardous chemicals. Further, the plastic that cannot be recycled is disposed of in incinerators, landfills, thereby polluting the air, land and sea. Worries about receiving such waste have forced countries to act.

The Exporters

• Garbage is exported from about a dozen developed countries, including the U.S., Canada, France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and the U.K., according to Greenpeace.


• The European Union is the largest exporter of plastic waste, with the U.S. leading as the top exporter for a single country.

The Importers

• The list predominantly includes Asia countries such as China, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. They import some form of waste or the other.


• About 1,21,000 metric tonnes of plastic waste is imported to India.


• Interestingly, some developed countries too import plastic waste. They include Germany, the U.S., Italy, Canada, Sweden, France, the U.K., the Netherlands and Belgium.

 

Picture Credit : Google