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What will we do when we can't send our junk to China?
The dominant position that China holds in global manufacturing means that for many years China has also been the largest global importer of many types of recyclable materials. Last year, Chinese manufacturers imported 7.3m metric tonnes of waste plastics from developed countries including the UK, the EU, the US and Japan.
However, in July 2017, China announced big changes in the quality control placed on imported materials, notifying the World Trade Organisation that it will ban imports of 24 categories of recyclables and solid waste by the end of the year. This campaign against yang laji or "foreign garbage" applies to plastic, textiles and mixed paper and will result in China taking a lot less material as it replaces imported materials with recycled material collected in its own domestic market, from its growing middle-class and Western-influenced consumers.
The impact of this will be far-reaching. China is the dominant market for recycled plastic. There are concerns that much of the waste that China currently imports, especially the lower grade materials, will have nowhere else to go.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jelizondo on Saturday October 21 2017, @05:16PM (5 children)
A bit over a year ago I had some money in the business of collecting, shredding and shipping plastic materials (mostly polycarbonate) to customers in China. It was good, but I decided to let my partner keep the business as it is way out of my field of knowledge.
I can tell you that the Chinese, at least the once we dealt with, would take no garbage at all. Any plastic that wasn’t clean was rejected and not paid for and we would incur the shipping expenses as well, so we were very careful to ship only 1st class material (i.e. consumer waste) and any second class material (industrial waste) was shipped only after being accepted by the customer. No third or dirty material was ever requested or accepted.
So, the reason must be to protect the internal markets and force the recyclers to use Chinese materials instead of importing them. Of course, it must be cheaper to get plastic waste right there than shipping it from half-way around the world.
We used to ship by the container-load (20 metric tons) and could not get enough to satisfy the demand; now my former partner is sitting on tons of plastic with no customer. I’m glad I left the business early, even if the reason had nothing to do with China stopping the import of materials.
Some other comments suggest recycling locally. Forget it. The customers for recycled plastic are factories producing something with the plastic and given that most factories are now in China, there are no customers. Just ask my partner.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday October 21 2017, @05:40PM (3 children)
I think this comment [soylentnews.org] is right, but only in the long term.
In the short term people like your partner are still sitting on a pile of garbage and when factories do come back to the U.S., they will be mostly automated with only a few jobs created. There is no reason at all to import container ships worth of assembled stuff from China once Foxconn and others have made the switch to robots.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by jelizondo on Saturday October 21 2017, @10:04PM (2 children)
I think you’re right, with few employees manufacturing can come back to U.S. and it will probably do so: reduced cost of shipping, more availability of raw materials, no language difficulties, no danger of import tariffs, etc.
However, all those jobs are gone, no matter what anyone says. And no, most people can’t be retrained to move to service jobs, unless it’s flipping burgers and even that is getting highly automated. I think joblessness is here to stay.
The U.S. and the E.U., need to chart a new course, whether it is a basic minimum income, reduced work hours or some other solution because very few jobs will be available in the near future. Forget the Mexicans, it’s the robots!
I single out the U.S. and E.U. because in poor countries in Africa, Asia and elsewhere you can make a living (a very poor one) with subsistence agriculture and a couple of chickens. Try that in LA or New York.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 21 2017, @10:55PM
Let them eat weeds. [soylentnews.org]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 22 2017, @08:59AM
It is part of the system. Big corps want to have a save batch of unemployed people, the state pays those people to cope with their situation (with public money) and the corps have a pressure system to prevent salaries from increasing (or allow even reduction), giving more private profit.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday October 21 2017, @10:03PM
Meanwhile, the 3D printing filament costs an arm and a leg (nylon goes > $30/kg) if you don't buy it from chinese market.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford