Sam Reeves, AFP Yahoo News 23 Apr 19;
Jenjarom (Malaysia) (AFP) - From grubby packaging engulfing small Southeast Asian communities to waste piling up in plants from the US to Australia, China's ban on accepting the world's used plastic has plunged global recycling into turmoil.
For many years, China received the bulk of scrap plastic from around the world, processing much of it into a higher quality material that could be used by manufacturers.
But at the start of 2018, it closed its doors to almost all foreign plastic waste, as well as many other recyclables, in a push to protect the local environment and air quality, leaving developed nations struggling to find places to send their waste.
"It was like an earthquake," Arnaud Brunet, director general of Brussels-based industry group The Bureau of International Recycling, told AFP.
"China was the biggest market for recyclables. It created a major shock in the global market."
Instead, plastic is being redirected in huge quantities to Southeast Asia, where Chinese recyclers have shifted en masse.
With a large Chinese-speaking minority, Malaysia was a top choice for Chinese recyclers looking to relocate, and official data showed plastic imports tripled from 2016 levels to 870,000 tonnes last year.
In the small town of Jenjarom, not far from Kuala Lumpur, plastic processing plants suddenly appeared in large numbers, pumping out noxious fumes day and night.
Huge mounds of plastic waste, dumped in the open, piled up as recyclers struggled to cope with the influx of packaging from everyday goods, such as foods and laundry detergents, from as far afield as Germany, the United States, and Brazil.
Residents soon noticed the acrid stench over the town -- the kind of odour that is usual in processing plastic, but environmental campaigners believe some of the fumes also come from the incineration of plastic waste that was too low quality to recycle.
"People were attacked by toxic fumes, waking them up at night. Many were coughing a lot," local resident, Pua Lay Peng, told AFP.
"I could not sleep, I could not rest, I always felt fatigued," the 47-year-old added.
- Toxic fumes -
Pua and other community members began investigating and by mid-2018 had located about 40 suspected processing plants, many of which appeared to be operating secretly and without proper permits.
Initial complaints to authorities went nowhere but they kept up pressure, and eventually the government took action. Authorities started closing down illegal factories in Jenjarom, and announced a nationwide temporary freeze on plastic import permits.
Thirty-three factories were closed down, although activists believe many have quietly moved elsewhere in the country. Residents say air quality has improved but some plastic dumps remain.
In Australia, Europe and the US, many of those collecting plastic and other recyclables were left scrambling to find new places to send it.
They face higher costs to get it processed by recyclers at home and in some cases have resorted to sending it to landfill sites as the scrap has piled up too quickly.
"Twelve months on, we are still feeling the effects but we have not moved to the solutions yet," said Garth Lamb, president of industry body Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia.
Some have been quicker to adapt to the new environment, such as some local authority-run centres that collect recyclables in Adelaide, southern Australia.
The centres used to send nearly everything -- ranging from plastic to paper and glass -- to China but now 80 percent is processed by local companies, with most of the rest shipped to India.
"We moved quickly and looked to domestic markets," Adam Faulkner, chief executive of the Northern Adelaide Waste Management Authority, told AFP.
"We've found that by supporting local manufacturers, we've been able to get back to pre-China ban prices," he added.
- Consume less, produce less -
In mainland China, imports of plastic waste have dropped from 600,000 tonnes per month in 2016 to about 30,000 a month in 2018, according to data cited by a new report from Greenpeace and environmental NGO Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.
Once bustling centres of recycling have been abandoned as firms shifted to Southeast Asia.
On a visit to the southern town of Xingtan last year, Chen Liwen, founder of environmental NGO China Zero Waste Alliance, found the once-booming recycling industry had disappeared.
"The plastic recyclers were gone -- there were 'for rent' signs plastered on factory doors and even recruitment signs calling for experienced recyclers to move to Vietnam," she told AFP.
Southeast Asian nations affected early by the China ban -- as well as Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam were hit hard -- have taken steps to limit plastic imports, but the waste has simply been redirected to other countries without restrictions, such as Indonesia and Turkey, according to the Greenpeace report.
With only an estimated nine percent of plastics ever produced recycled, campaigners say the only long-term solution to the plastic waste crisis is for companies to make less and consumers to use less.
Greenpeace campaigner Kate Lin said: "The only solution to plastic pollution is producing less plastic."
New research exposes a crisis in the global trade of 'recyclable' plastics
The Star 23 Apr 19;
PETALING JAYA: The plastics crisis has a clear origin - corporations that mass produce plastic packaging to boost profits, says a newly-published report.
The report by Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA ) with data analysis on the global waste trade from Greenpeace East Asia detailed how China's ban on plastic waste import led to the harmful waste harming countries across South-East Asia.
It found that China's import ban redirected the plastic waste into Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand, who quickly set up import restrictions. Then, exports overflowed into Indonesia, India, and Turkey.
GAIA's field investigations in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand detailed illegal recycling operations and crime syndicates, open burning, water contamination, crop death, and a rise of illness tied to environmental pollution that has led to citizens' protests and governments rushing to place restrictions to protect their borders.
For example, North Sumengko in Indonesia turned into an international dumping ground almost overnight with trash piled two metres high, makeshift dumps, and open burning in the farming community.
"Once one country regulates plastic waste imports, it floods into the next unregulated destination. When that country regulates, the exports move to the next one," said Kate Lin, a senior campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia.
"It's a predatory system, but it's also increasingly inefficient. Each new iteration shows more and more plastic going off grid — where we can't see what's done with it — and that's unacceptable," she added.
Lin said recycling systems can never keep up with plastic production, as only 9% of the plastics ever produced are recycled.
"The only solution to plastic pollution is producing less plastic. Heavy plastic users - mainly consumer goods companies like Nestlé and Unilever, but also supermarkets - need to reduce single-use plastics packaging and move towards refill and reuse system to get us out of this crisis," she added.
"Plastic waste from industrialised countries is literally engulfing communities in South-East Asia, transforming what were once clean and thriving places into toxic dumpsites," said Von Hernandez, the global coordinator of the Break Free from Plastic movement.
"It is the height of injustice that countries and communities with less capacity and resources to deal with plastic pollution are being targeted as escape valves for the throwaway plastic generated by industrialised countries," she added.
The report suggested that countries explore the "prior informed consent" model that is already in place for other types of hazardous waste to also be applied to plastic waste.
This means exporters of plastic waste should receive permission from destination countries in advance.
"As wealthy nations dump their low-grade plastic trash onto country after country in the global south, the least the international community can do is safeguard a country's right to know exactly what is being sent to their shores," Beau Baconguis, Regional Plastics Coordinator at GAIA Asia Pacific said.
However, ultimately, exporting countries need to deal with their plastic pollution problem at home instead of passing the burden onto other communities.
Dumping plastic waste in Asia found destroying crops and health
Michael Taylor Reuters 23 Apr 19;
KUALA LUMPUR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The world’s recyclable plastic is being shipped to Asia where it is illegally dumped, buried or burned in the country with the lightest regulations, environmentalists warned on Tuesday calling for greater transparency in the global waste trade.
A report by Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and Greenpeace East Asia analyzed the top 21 exporters and importers of plastic recyclable waste from 2016 until 2018 - before and after China stopped taking such waste last year.
It found that plastic waste imports into Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam jumped from mid-2017 to early 2018, leading to illegal operations dumping and open-burning, contaminating water supplies, killing crops and causing respiratory illnesses.
“For the first world, it makes them feel good about their waste supposedly being recycled but in reality it ends up in countries that cannot deal with the waste,” said Beau Baconguis, a plastics campaigner at GAIA in Manila.
“So the pollution is heading south to countries that do not have that capacity,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
As pollution and environmental damage linked to the rise in plastic waste became known in countries like Malaysia and Thailand during 2018, protests led to tighter waste regulations and import restrictions by authorities, the study found.
Large volumes of plastic waste then diverted to other countries in the region, like Indonesia and India, where regulations on the waste trade are more lenient, the study said.
“Once one country regulates plastic waste imports, it floods into the next un-regulated destination,” said Kate Lin, a Hong Kong based campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia.
“It’s a predatory system, but it’s also increasingly inefficient,” she said. “Each new iteration shows more and more plastic going off grid - where we can’t see what’s done with it - and that’s unacceptable.”
China was the leading importer of plastic waste until it banned imports at the start of 2018 after a string of scandals.
This disrupted the flow of more than 7 million tonnes of plastic scrap a year, valued at about $3.7 billion.
The top exporters of plastic waste analyzed for the report included the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan.
Members of the Basel Convention, the main global pact regulating the trans-boundary movement of hazardous waste, will meet in Geneva from April 29 and decide on a proposal from Norway to create greater transparency in plastic waste trade.
If adopted, any plastic waste exporters would be required to obtain prior approval from an importing country, and give more detailed information on the volume and type of waste.
Greenpeace’s Lin welcomed the proposal but urged consumer goods companies to reduce the single-use plastics they produce.
“It is a good step but definitely not a final solution,” Lin said.
