Photo by Phoebe Lawson
Because China was taking in so much plastic waste, not only was it affecting their environment but also their children. Having to use plastic containers to get their water, amongst other materials because that is one of the biggest products in China and sometimes the only thing people have access to.
China’s Over It
Why won't China accept recyclables from the U.S. any longer?
Since the late 1980s to the early 90s, the United States, along with various other countries have been shipping boatloads of plastic recyclables to China but they’ve had enough of it. About a year ago, in January of 2018, China placed an import ban stating that they will not be having any recycled products sold or traded to them anymore.
The Chinese decided to first take in all these waste products in order to reuse it. Clearly, this went overboard because of multiple reasons; but, overall, China was very open to accepting these plastics from overseas because compared to theirs, it was usually higher quality than what was being distributed in their country.
China, from 1992, has been accepting so much scrap materials from all over that it accounts for around 45 percent of all the world’s recyclables, as stated in a study by Science Advances.
In said study, “[…] the emerging markets in China in the 1990s found that the material could be used profitably […] and that it could be used to manufacture more goods for sale or export.”
Back when they were first taking in all the waste, it did have positive effects but as time went on the overbearing amount of garbage that was being sold to China was just too much and they felt that it needed to stop in order to protect their environment and keep their citizens healthy.
According to NPR’s (National Public Radio) news network, from just America, about 26.7 million tons [of recyclables] were sent out of the country between 1988 and 2016 to China and in just 2016 “[…] the US shipped more than 16 million tonnes of scrap commodities to China worth more than $5.2 billion […]” (Phys.org).
In order for China to stay economically, environmentally, and socially stable there was no way that they would be able to continue obtaining all the waste that they have been for more than two decades; the decision to put in place the export ban in 2018 as part of an anti-pollution campaign was necessary and beneficial to China but did cause some turmoil to break out within the other countries.
For China to even take in the trash in the first place isn’t shocking but to continue for years and years after seeing how it began to negatively impact them like how they just had piles upon piles of plastic and really had nothing to do with it besides try and reuse it but in the end, there is only so much you can reuse and recycle.