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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/21/us-plastic-recycling-landfills
A Guardian investigation reveals that cities around the [US] are no longer recycling many types of plastic dropped into recycling bins. Instead, they are being landfilled, burned or stockpiled. From Los Angeles to Florida to the Arizona desert, officials say, vast quantities of plastic are now no better than garbage.
The "market conditions" on the sign [Pearl] Pai saw referred to the situation caused by China. Once the largest buyer of US plastic waste, the country shut its doors to all but highest-quality plastics in 2017. The move sent shockwaves through the American industry as recyclers scrambled, and often failed, to find new buyers. Now the turmoil besetting a global trade network, which is normally hidden from view, is hitting home.
"All these years I have been feeling like I'm doing something responsible," said Pai, clearly dumbstruck as she walked away with a full bag. "The truth hurts."
[...] [Cobe] Skye and [Habib] Kharrat emphasized that the situation was not unique to Los Angeles. "From what we're hearing from our colleagues, what's happening in Los Angeles county is representative of what is happening all over the US and all over the state as a result of these international policies," said Skye.
The China ban revealed an uncomfortable truth about plastic recycling, Skye said: much of this plastic was never possible to recycle at all.
"[China] would just pull out the items that were actually recyclable and burn or throw away the rest," he said. "China has subsidized the recycling industry for many years in a way that distorted our views."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 27 2019, @03:05AM
As long as the throwing part means safely sequestered in landfills you're doing recycling right.
But the problem was/is lots of thrown plastic eventually ended up in the ocean.
The thing is China already burns tons of dirty coal for energy. They should reduce the amount of coal burnt by burning tons of unrecyclable plastic for energy instead. There are cleaner ways of burning plastic. Sweden and Japan can manage to burn waste fairly cleanly at least by China's abysmal air quality standards ( http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/04/ChinaPollutionLevels/6c54d3685.jpg [theatlantic.com] )
The real surprise is China didn't manage to figure out a way to burn most of the plastic for energy. After all imagine countries sending you tons of fuel and PAYING you to do so.