Mixed dirty
plastic waste
is almost
impossible
to recycle.
Rich countries
usually ship it
to poor countries,
in Asia.
Over 100 million tons
has been shipped
in the past 20 years.
Very little was converted
to plastic granules, and
recycled.
Most was burned, without
modern pollution controls,
or dumped in rivers.
Scrap plastic dumped
in rivers eventually
reached the oceans,
The Canadian government’s
recent announcement
about banning certain
single-use plastic items,
is almost meaningless
virtue signaling.
Earlier this month
the Philippines and
Malaysia sent a few
small shipments of this
material back to Canada.
It was too dirty and had
garbage mixed in.
That mixed waste
was still containerized,
so it was easy to return,
after Philippines President
Rodrigo Duterte had
threatened to dump it
on a Canadian beach !
At the start of 2018,
the Chinese government
announced tit would no longer
import waste from rich countries.
Two alternatives:
(1)
Burning the plastic
in incinerators -- but
too little capacity exists,
and environmentalists
will try to stop this.
(2)
Bury it in landfill
In the EU, restrictions on landfill
sharply constrain that alternative.
Heavy lobbying from
the “recycling” industry
did not stop the United
Nations Basel Convention
from outlawing trade
in plastic scrap,
effective in 2021.
EU law now stipulates that
55% of plastic packaging
needs to be recycled by 2030.