China's recycling ban has sent America's plastic to Malaysia. Now they don't want it -- so what next

[nitpicker]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/26/asia/malaysia-plastic-recycle-intl/index.html

China's recycling ban has sent America's plastic to Malaysia. Now they don't want it -- so what next?

By Ivan Watson, Jo Shelley, Sugam Pokharel and Ushar Daniele, CNN

Updated 1:22 AM ET, Sat April 27, 2019

Seremban, Malaysia (CNN) — Dozens of laborers and factory operators sit hand-cuffed in rows on the pavement at an industrial park in Malaysia. They've been detained in a government raid on unlicensed plastic recyclers as the country seeks to curb a growing illicit industry.

"It's illegal," said Yeo Bee Yin, Malaysia's Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change, who attended the raid and had invited journalists to watch.
(snip)

"It's against the Environmental Quality Act because they do not have licenses and they are polluting."

Malaysia is cracking down on opportunists who are trying to cash-in on China's decision last year to ban plastic waste imports. Since July 2018, officials have shut down at least 148 unlicensed plastic recycling factories -- but have only pressed charges against a handful of suspects.

Much of the waste comes from countries outside Malaysia, including the US, which angers Yeo who says wealthy nations shouldn't be using her country as a trash dump. "I will take care of my own rubbish," she says. "You should take care of yours."

The rise of illegal recyclers in Malaysia, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, has exposed the rotten side of an industry that experts say is often anything but "green."

"There's no magical land of recycling with rainbows and unicorns. It's much grittier than that," says Martin Bourque, executive director at the Ecology Center in Berkeley, California, a non-profit group that has been engaged in curbside recycling programs since 1973.
(snip)

But approximately 40% of the non-bottle mixed plastic that his organization gathers is not recycled -- either because it's made from plastics that are too costly or hard to process, have been contaminated with food or other materials, or there simply isn't a market for that type of plastic. Therefore, this plastic goes directly to landfill. Bourque says that's because he cannot find a destination that can recycle the plastic without causing additional harm to the environment.

"We would much rather see them in a landfill then being exported to a foreign country where we don't know what the final destination will be," Bourque explains.
(snip)

[HAB911]

1. So why isn't the "free market" in the US

responding with a new industry here?