Dear MEL Topic Readers,
China's recycling ban has sent America's
plastic to Malaysia. Now they don't want it -- so what next?
Even if everyone is environmentally conscious
enough to properly sort and dump plastic waste into recycling bins, the
collected wasted needs to be properly recycled by someone somewhere on the
globe. Then how much of the used plastic is collected, how much of the collected
plastic is recycled domestically, and how much of the exported plastic is illegally
processed or dumped? Your environmentally conscious act to your place might be
causing environmental nightmare somewhere else.
Especially since January 2018 when China
stopped importing plastic waste, much of the exported plastic waste from
developed countries like the US started to land in other developing Asian
countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and India. Then these countries took tougher
actions to restrict such plastic import from foreign countries. This ripple
effect turned Malaysia into a final destination of some of the plastic waste
from the US. If the imported plastic waste reaches to a properly managed and
operated recycler, it will be fed into a series of machines to be washed,
crushed and sliced into small flakes, and then melted and processed to become small
pellets that are sold to plastic users. But not all the imported plastic waste ends
up such desirable reincarnation.
Enjoy reading the article and seeing the video
to learn about what happens to plastic waste once collected.
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