China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by yoran » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 8:12 PM UTC

asdsa5325 wrote: post #31

yoran wrote: post #5

Good for them. Let the rest of the world fix the problems they're creating themselves.

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

No one is talking about morals here. They are just limiting how much of someone else's garbage they are cleaning up.

They are creating it, that's true. But the buyers (i.e. developed nations) know very well that the stuff they're asking them to produce is harmful for the environment, so their hands are equally dirty here. When demand goes down, so will supply.

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

#52

Post by p3llin0r3 » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 8:12 PM UTC

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...

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

#53

Post by raverbashing » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 8:12 PM UTC

seanalltogether wrote: post #9

Seems like Northern Africa would be a pretty logical place for disposing waste. Lots of unused desert land very close to the sea for easy access by barge.

I wonder if (solar) pyrolysis of plastic for turning it back into fuel would be feasible.

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

#54

Post by justinator » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 8:13 PM UTC

"Plastic Recycling" always seemed like such a scam. Very little of it can be turned into the same thing it was, before. Most of it can only be downcycled to an inferior product (and then it's mostly the end of the line). To think we've simply shipped it off to another country to deal with the problem is criminal. Another part of my childhood where the details were far less idealistic than the big picture.

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

#55

Post by analyst74 » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 8:13 PM UTC

mtw wrote: post #23

Is it me or there's been recently China articles with a negative bias recently on hacker news?

I don't feel this article is particularly negative about China except title, but the negative tone in comments are surprising considering HN being tech and business focused.

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

#56

Post by mjevans » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

state_less wrote: post #29

JulianMorrison wrote: post #7

We need to stop making things out of plastic, where any alternative exists. The stuff is going to be the asbestos of the 21st century. Microplastic has been vastly, vastly underrated as a problem. All my lifetime the attitude has been that plastic takes eons to degrade and pulverize, but when it does, the problem of unsightly or dangerous litter is presumably finished. Now we're seeing the opposite: plastic dust is a…

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…

Actually, yes.

Glass jars/bottles and metal cans are great for recycling (sometimes even reuse if standards are high enough).

Paper bags are also a great technology.

I could see a standardized beverage container format (including a paper wrapper lightly glued on) and cheap reusable metal 'silverware' that is also magnetic (because we're a nation of idiots and this stuff is going to get in to the waste stream) working out.

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

#57

Post by wool_gather » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #24

rmshea wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it should serve as a wake up call for the rest of the world. Sweden has had incredible success with recycling in recent years, most notably touting the fact that they import other countries' trash to use in their recycling plants [1]. How can we recreate Sweden’s model in the US and have our own solution to the trash problem instead of giving it to China? [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-s…

> Sweden has had incredible success with recycling in recent years That line is more false than true. For the most part they are not recycling their trash, they are incinerating it. Additionally Sweden is tiny. Trash there is brought to local recycling centers with 6 to 8 or more different bins, and people are expected to sort their trash. How would you do that in the US? Trucks with 8 compartments? Where would you e…

> you can't expect people to transport their recycling

Why on earth not? The majority used to haul their own garbage to the town dump a just few decades ago (and some still do in smaller towns). Ubiquity of curbside pickup is relatively new -- doubly so for recycling. And recyclables are a heck of a lot more pleasant to carry in the car than rotting kitchen scraps.

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

#58

Post by justinator » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

state_less wrote: post #29

JulianMorrison wrote: post #7

We need to stop making things out of plastic, where any alternative exists. The stuff is going to be the asbestos of the 21st century. Microplastic has been vastly, vastly underrated as a problem. All my lifetime the attitude has been that plastic takes eons to degrade and pulverize, but when it does, the problem of unsightly or dangerous litter is presumably finished. Now we're seeing the opposite: plastic dust is a…

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…

I mean, we use it despite it's glaring problems because the material is essential free, being a byproduct of oil refining.

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

#59

Post by zanmat0 » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

asdsa5325 wrote: post #31

yoran wrote: post #5

Good for them. Let the rest of the world fix the problems they're creating themselves.

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

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

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

#60

Post by oldcynic » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 8:15 PM UTC

p3llin0r3 wrote: post #42

r00fus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should we go back to glass bottles and paper bags? If you put a price (read: tax) on plastic, I'm sure many folks would jump at the opportunity of replacing plastic-heavy stuff with no/minimal plastic options possibly using glass or paper (or metal where things are disposable that shouldn't be). Thing is, plastic has a subsidized price right now due to petroleum supply chain being subsidized - plastic is a byproduc…

Unfortunately, this probably wouldn't work. Most plastic waste does not come from rich countries with decent waste infrastructure. It comes from shipping and fishing and industrial vessels who dump their garbage into the ocean, and developing countries who dispose of all of their waste by throwing it into a river or the ocean to be washed away. You can't tax them because they are not in your country. You would have t…

Should we ignore the escalating amounts of waste, mainly from single use packaging, in the developed world meanwhile?