China’s decision to stop accepting plastic waste from other nations is causing plastic to pile up around the globe, and wealthy countries must find a way to slow its accumulation, scientists said.
The scientists sought to quantify the effects of the Chinese import ban on the worldwide trade in plastic waste and found that other nations might need to find a home for more than 110 million tonnes of plastic by 2030.
The ban went into effect on Dec. 31 last year, and the stockpiling trend is to worsen, they said.
Photo: AP / Skagit Valley Herald
The study, “The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade,” was published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
Wealthy nations such as the US, Japan and Germany have long sent their plastic recyclables to China, but the country does not want to be the world’s dumping ground for plastic anymore.
The study found that China has since 1992 taken more than 105 million tonnes of the material, the equivalent of the weight of more than 300 Empire State Buildings.
The change is forcing countries to rethink how they deal with plastic waste.
They need to be more selective about what they choose to recycle and more fastidious about reusing plastics, said Amy Brooks, first author on the study and a doctoral student in engineering at the University of Georgia.
In the meantime, more plastic waste is likely to get incinerated or sent to landfills, Brooks said.
“This is a wake-up call. Historically, we’ve been depending on China to take in this recycled waste and now they are saying no,” she said. “That waste has to be managed and we have to manage it properly.”
Using UN data, the study found that China has dwarfed all other plastics importers, accounting for about 45 percent of the world’s plastic waste since 1992.
The ban is part of a larger crackdown on foreign garbage, which is viewed as a threat to health and the environment.
Some nations that have seen an increase in plastic waste imports since China’s ban — such as Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia — are already looking to enforce bans of their own because they are quickly becoming overburdened, Brooks said.
The study says that plastic is more difficult to recycle than other materials, such as glass and aluminum, said Sherri Mason, chair of the department of geology and environmental sciences at the State University of New York at Fredonia.
Many consumers try to recycle plastics that cannot be recycled, Mason said, adding that one solution could be to simplify the variety of plastics used to make products.
“We have to confront this material and our use of it, because so much of it is single-use disposable plastic and this is a material that doesn’t go away,” Mason said. “It doesn’t return to the planet the way other materials do.”
The US National Recycling Coalition last month said in a statement that it must “fundamentally shift how we speak to the public” and “how we collect and process” recyclables.
“We need to look at new uses for these materials,” coalition executive director Marjorie Griek said. “And how do you get manufacturers to design a product that is more easily recyclable?”
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although