| Title | China Bans Foreign Waste – But What Will Happen to the World's Recycling? | |
| Date | Saturday October 21 2017, @07:10AM | |
| Author | mrpg | |
| Topic | ||
| from the I-dont-know dept. | ||
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.
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printed from SoylentNews, China Bans Foreign Waste – But What Will Happen to the World's Recycling? on 2024-04-19 23:37:31