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China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

bloomberg.com

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Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#111

Post by lopmotr »

Grazester wrote: post #104
state_less wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic is an amazing material. You can thermoform it, it's a great insulator, molds and fungi don't feed on it, it's incredibly strong (e.g. UHMWPE rope a.k.a dyneema) and so on. The trouble seems to be we don't really respect the environment enough, so we use it in terrible ways, like single use products. We often don't need those nice properties in single use products, yet we use it anyway because we don't pay due…

Yes with the glass bottles please. In the Caribbean Soda use to come in glass bottle with a $0.50 deposit. You would never find a bottle on the side of the street, kids lamented losing their deposit if they broke a bottle(also ran the risk of getting yourself cut if you did) so they made sure to hold on to those bottles with both hands. Now soda comes in a plastic bottle with no deposit on it and isn't recycled on th…

Isn't that a problem that could be solved with law enforcement and cleaners like what developed countries do? That still seems to be cheaper than glass bottles.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#112

Post by 628C6l0 »

devoply wrote: post #74
asdsa5325 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is the one creating the plastic in the first place. Don't act like they have a moral high ground.

They create the plastics for those who buy them. Don't act like anyone has the moral high ground.

[flagged]

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#113

Post by mc32 »

r00fus wrote: post #79
mc32 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically Aramco in planning for future with less petro-derived fuel, is planning on making other things from petroleum, mosltly more plasticky stuff... Can’t blame them much since that is the source of ~80% of their revenues...

Plastic is already everywhere already - is this just a push to increase it's usage?

They see the market for petrified fuels going down so they are working with DuPont and other to research ways to make more uses for petrochemicals

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#115

Post by 628C6l0 »

pkaye wrote: post #100
zanmat0 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If no one was buying it, would they still be creating it?

Yup just like the oil companies are not at fault. If no was buying it, would they still be pumping it up?

Let's nuke the shit out of them

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#116

Post by 628C6l0 »

neolefty wrote: post #95
Rotdhizon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title is either purposefully misleading to get views, or just to express anti-china sentiment.

To me, it didn't sound derogatory to China at all—just a country shifting its priorities, saying "Y'all got to deal with your own garbage now."

Nuke these subhuman beasts

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#117

Post by bmer »

RealityVoid wrote: post #75
jseliger wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A useful post. Have you read the Adam Minter book Junkyard Planet ? https://jakeseliger.com/2018/04/10/junkyard-planet-adam-mint... . It's a deep and excellent look into how the junk supply starts in the United States and goes (went, now, I guess) to China. "Waste" made sense for China when the country was poor and desperately starved for raw materials. Now the country is less poor; we are going to have to somehow su…

Is landfilling truly terrible for the environment? It seems to me as though if a concentrated area were used for landfilling, that area is ruined, but overall the surface is small in the grand scheme of things, so it should have a relatively small impact. Can anybody expand _why_ landfills are bad? It certainly seems better than simply leaving junk everywhere.

Landfills are not sustainable, and are best used as a stop gap measure. It might seem like we have lots of easily accessible empty land right now, but eventually easily accessible land is going to become harder to find. It seems that it would be wise to come up with a sustainable solution, rather than assuming we can rely on a non-renewable resource forever.

That being said, why can't volcanoes be used as some sort of a landfill?

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#118

Post by baxtr »

p3llin0r3 wrote: post #52
baxtr wrote: post #27

This is actually great news. Western people will have to get innovate about avoiding garbage, plastic in particular. Oceans will intake less waste (Yes, I’m optimistic about this one)

Western nations aren't the problem, it's developing countries with poor waste infrastructure and industrial vessels. https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting...

It is a very delicate question of responsibility. Developing countries pollute the oceans most, but the source of waste is - to a large degree - western nations. So probably, the best way to put it, is to say that both are responsible. However, now things have changed, with China at least.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#119

Post by vkou »

r00fus wrote: post #16
fredley wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I predict it won't be long before using non-biodegradeable plastic in any packaging or short-lived product will be banned. It's outrageous that everything is packaged in material that will almost certainly not be properly recycled, and end up in landfill or the ocean.

Bioplastics / biodegradable plastics are not a panacea: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/bioplastics.html

> Unfortunately, not all bioplastics compost easily or completely and some leave toxic residues or plastic fragments behind. Some will break down only at high temperatures in industrial-scale, municipal composters or digesters, or in biologically active landfills (also called bioreactor landfills), not on ordinary home compost heaps or in conventional landfills.

This is not that big a problem. The solution to it is municipal composting, instead of chucking it in your back yard.

Bioplastics aren't a panacea, but biodegradable ones are. We want durable materials that don't biodegrade. That's why we use plastics. Ideally, there should be a way - some catalyst, or some environment in which they do degrade. Industrial composting of biodegradable plastics is just that.

Unfortunately, it does not really solve the microfiber problem. We can't make clothing out of biodegradable plastic.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#120

Post by eli »

bmer wrote: post #117
RealityVoid wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is landfilling truly terrible for the environment? It seems to me as though if a concentrated area were used for landfilling, that area is ruined, but overall the surface is small in the grand scheme of things, so it should have a relatively small impact. Can anybody expand _why_ landfills are bad? It certainly seems better than simply leaving junk everywhere.

Landfills are not sustainable, and are best used as a stop gap measure. It might seem like we have lots of easily accessible empty land right now, but eventually easily accessible land is going to become harder to find. It seems that it would be wise to come up with a sustainable solution, rather than assuming we can rely on a non-renewable resource forever. That being said, why can't volcanoes be used as some sort o…

The same reasons we don't just burn all our trash in incinerators plus the inaccessibility and relatively small number of active volcanoes.
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