'...Then came the slump, decimating the Chinese recycling industry and leaving Britain, the US and others grappling with growing volumes of recycled waste and nowhere to send it.
..."Until about eight weeks ago, for example, the entire [US] west coast paper market was sent to China and most of it was sent south. It was processed and made into packaging for products that then shipped back to the US ... But when US consumer demand dropped off, that broke the cycle."
Across the scrap trade, prices have halved or worse in a matter of months.
...There is no longer demand for plastic granules from nearby companies such as Hongkai Plastic Products, which made items such as bicycle handlebars. Its owner, Mr Zheng, has sent 20 workers home. "My factory was hit by the economic crisis - it's been closed for two months already," he said. "We usually sell our products to a dealer and most of his business is exports. He didn't give us any more orders."
At a factory down the road, the response to queries was more brusque. "We've already gone bust," said a man, and hung up." link
Showing posts with label plastic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plastic. Show all posts
Intense article about plastic marine debris.
"We still have limited tax dollars to spend and scarier nightmares to fear. No one — not Pallister, not Moore — will tell you that plastic pollution is the greatest man-made threat our oceans face. Depending whom you ask, that honor goes to global warming, agricultural runoff or overfishing. But unlike many pollutants, plastic has no natural source and therefore there is no doubt that we are to blame. Because we can see it, plastic is a powerful bellwether of our impact upon the earth. Where plastics travel, invisible pollutants — pesticides and fertilizers from lawns and farms, petrochemicals from roads, sewage tainted with pharmaceuticals — often follow. Last June, shortly before my voyage in the Opus began, Sylvia Earle, formerly N.O.A.A.’s chief scientist, delivered an impassioned speech on marine debris at the World Bank in Washington. “Trash is clogging the arteries of the planet,” Earle said. “We’re beginning to wake up to the fact that the planet is not infinitely resilient.” For ages humanity saw in the ocean a sublime grandeur suggestive of eternity. No longer. Surveying the debris on remote beaches like Gore Point, we see that the ocean is more finite than we’d thought. " LINK
The plastic bag.
Great article from Salon about the ubiquitous plastic bag.
"...The most ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, the lowly plastic bag is an environmental scourge like none other, sapping the life out of our oceans and thwarting our attempts to recycle it."
LINK to article- read it, it's very good, and goes into the paper/plastic thing with all the info you need to smackdown the next fool who claims that plastic bags ger recycled, or claims that they're less damaging than paper bags. Annoyingly, article also mentions those damn "I am not a plastic bag" bags. People got trampled trying to buy those damn things. Dead, for trying to be trendy. Yeah. Argh.
"...The most ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, the lowly plastic bag is an environmental scourge like none other, sapping the life out of our oceans and thwarting our attempts to recycle it."
LINK to article- read it, it's very good, and goes into the paper/plastic thing with all the info you need to smackdown the next fool who claims that plastic bags ger recycled, or claims that they're less damaging than paper bags. Annoyingly, article also mentions those damn "I am not a plastic bag" bags. People got trampled trying to buy those damn things. Dead, for trying to be trendy. Yeah. Argh.
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.
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.
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