All nations must come up with answers in waste crisis
- Developed nations are finding they can no longer dump their rubbish in China or Southeast Asia, and they must now process their own garbage and cut back on single-use plastics
The dirty secret about recycling became apparent at the start of last year when China stopped importing waste.
It had for more than two decades been taking plastic, paper and metals from developed countries – processing what it could and dumping what it could not – enabling governments to make extravagant claims about their recycling success.
But when the bans were imposed, rubbish began piling up in the United States and elsewhere and a search began for alternatives, with Southeast Asia being largely turned to.
Now, even those developing nations see the error of their ways and it is time for rich countries to take responsibility and tackle head-on a problem they should have been dealing with from the outset.
Recycling had been an opportunity for China; the material it processed could be used for manufacturing.
Container ships full of exports to developed countries that would otherwise have returned almost empty could instead be filled with waste material.