US cities burn recyclables after China bans imports

[Peter1469]

US cities burn recyclables after China bans imports

China was the big location to recycle trash. They took up to 40% of US recyclables. So why can't the US create recycling plants?

The conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes, plastic bottles, yoghurt containers and other items into recycling bins.

But in the past three months, half of these recyclables have been loaded on to trucks, taken to a hulking incineration facility and burned, according to the city’s government.


It’s a situation being replicated across the US as cities struggle to adapt to a recent ban by China on the import of items intended for reuse.


The loss of this overseas dumping ground means that plastics, paper and glass set aside for recycling by Americans is being stuffed into domestic landfills or is simply burned in vast volumes. This new reality risks an increase of plumes of toxic pollution that threaten the largely black and Latino communities who live near heavy industry and dumping sites in the US.


The huge Covanta incinerator just outside Philadelphia, located in Chester City, Pennsylvania, is sent about 200 tons of recycling material every day since China’s import ban came into practice last year, the company says.

***

Some experts worry that burning plastic recycling will create a new fog of dioxins that will worsen an already alarming health situation in Chester. Nearly four in 10 children in the city have asthma, while the rate of ovarian cancer is 64% higher than the rest of Pennsylvania and lung cancer rates are 24% higher, according to state health statistics.


The dilemma with what to do with items earmarked for recycling is playing out across the US. The country generates more than 250m tons of waste a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with about a third of this recycled and composted.


Until recently, China had been taking about 40% of US paper, plastics and other recyclables but this trans-Pacific waste route has now ground to a halt. In July 2017, China told the World Trade Organization it no longer wanted to be the end point for yang laji, or foreign garbage, with the country keen to grapple with its own mountains of waste.

[mamooth]

There's an incinerator a few miles upwind of me. It burns the trash and makes steam heat out of it.

I think that's great. Burning the trash is the best thing to do with it right now, both economically and environmentally.

I recycle aluminum, steel, glass and newspaper. Everything else goes in the trash, because that's the best place for it.

[Peter1469]

There's an incinerator a few miles upwind of me. It burns the trash and makes steam heat out of it.

I think that's great. Burning the trash is the best thing to do with it right now, both economically and environmentally.

I recycle aluminum, steel, glass and newspaper. Everything else goes in the trash, because that's the best place for it.

The burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan may be this generation's Agent Orange. They were open pits- not incinerators- a congressional delegation came out when I was there once, we told them we needed incinerators and they said it was a waste of money- no.

[Dr. Who]

US cities burn recyclables after China bans imports

China was the big location to recycle trash. They took up to 40% of US recyclables. So why can't the US create recycling plants?

Because America doesn't have a source of desperately cheap labor. Recycling is labor intensive and we haven't yet invented discriminatory robots. America's interest in recycling stops where it starts becoming too expensive. As a resource-rich country, there is no broad sense that not recycling will result in catastrophic shortages of necessary materials, so recycling becomes more like a religious/philosophical duty embraced by politicians on an ethical basis more than a deeply held conviction by the average citizen who doesn't really care.

[MisterVeritis]

Because America doesn't have a source of desperately cheap labor. Recycling is labor intensive and we haven't yet invented discriminatory robots. America's interest in recycling stops where it starts becoming too expensive. As a resource-rich country, there is no broad sense that not recycling will result in catastrophic shortages of necessary materials, so recycling becomes more like a religious/philosophical duty embraced by politicians on an ethical basis more than a deeply held conviction by the average citizen who doesn't really care.

Recycling is part of a religious experience for the liberal.

[Captdon]

Recycling is part of a religious experience for the liberal.

There is no market for recycled materials for the most part.