More about the China garbage importing industry

This is all much more interesting than I would have thought. The other day, I linked to an article about China cracking down on illegal importing of trash from the UK, and thought "Oh, how horrible, blah blah blah." Well, I think I thought too fast and not enough about it. There's a lot going on with this issue.

The world's largest container ship brought consumer goods from China to Britain at Christmas, it got a lot of press at the time, as a symbol of the decline in Western manufacturing, and the absolutely mad size (a quarter of a mile long) of the boat made it a good, catching story. Not many papers or sites wrote about how when it left the UK, the boat was full again- of UK garbage.

"A combination of the global economy and the boom in recycling in Britain, which last year generated nearly 7 million tonnes of recyclable waste, has created an inter-continental trade worth £460m. Last year, Britain sent more than 200,000 tonnes of plastic to China for recycling, along with 2 million tonnes of used paper or cardboard and large quantities of steel and redundant electrical goods.

It is a market generated by Britain's lack of capacity to cope with its own recycled waste and, more importantly, the thirst of China for "raw" materials, such as used plastic, to feed its booming economy."

This is big business, too- not only are the materials not going into UK landfills, but the Chinese are re-using many of the materials. The issue here is one of regulation- the exported garbage is supposed to be all recycleable, but that is where illegal imports become an issue for China, with unethical people sneaking in unrecyclable trash along with the sorted material ready for re-use.

"Such is the demand from the Far East, a trawl of plastic exchange websites yesterday revealed dozens of China-based companies willing to pay £300 for every tonne of bottles made from PET, the plastic used for water or soft drinks. In Britain, plastic recyclers can barely pay £100 per tonne." LINK

So that sounds good, right? But no, still there's more to think about here.

"According to figures from China's environmental watchdog, the village (Lianjiao) handles more than 200,000 tonnes of plastic a year, a big chunk of it imported illegally. "China strictly bans any imports of waste that cannot be recycled as raw materials or be treated harmlessly in the country," according to the State Environmental Protection Administration (Sepa). " Driven by profits, some dealers collaborate with overseas law breakers and illegally smuggle or import rubbish into China, causing damage to people's health and to the environment.

In Lianjiao, plastic sandwich wrappers from British high-street shops are sprayed with chemicals to remove the food debris and then hosed down, the effluent running into the Pearl river, one of the world's most polluted waterways. A large proportion of the plastic waste - that which is not fit for recycling - is burnt in incinerators or kilns, or melted down in acid baths. The air is filled with heady toxic smoke." LINK

Definitely more than meets the eye going on here.