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| China Exposes the Recycling Scam's Dirty Secret |
| 2018-07-26 |
| Due to TDS, Alexsandria, etc... we (at 'burg) neglected, IMO, the environment [SultanKnish] The huge dirty secret of recycling was also one of the world’s worst polluters. Every branch of government from Washington D.C. to your local town council had spent a fortune convincing people that recycling is a magical process that turns your old pizza boxes into new pizza boxes while creating those imaginary "green jobs" in the community. The reality was a lot dirtier. All of America’s industries, including trash sorting, had been outsourced to China. And recycling is just a fancy lefty way of saying "trash." All that recycling, which children in progressive communities are taught to sort as the closest thing to a religious ritual, was really being dumped by the ton on dirty ships and sent over to China. We weren’t recycling it. The Chinese were. But now China is banning foreign recycling because it’s bad for the environment. Even the Communists got tired of sorting through the trash of American socialists. The recycling scam shipped garbage on dirty ships for dirty industries while pretending that they’re clean and green. ...Now the recycling party’s over. Plastic recycling imports were banned early this year. Even fiber has trouble getting in to the People’s Republic. China’s mixed paper standards mean that most of the recycled cardboard and paper no longer passes muster. Instead it’s piling up in the United States. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #8 Perfectly logical from the Chinese point of view, the return voyage didn't bring competition it brought paid for garbage half of which probably was offloaded in the middle of the Pacific. The Chinese pay for the garbage, to the tune of $3.7b in 2016, for plastics alone. They buy it because making plastic pellets from recycled garbage is cheaper than making it from petroleum feedstock - in China, anyway. Other countries also pay for it, but their prices are lower, because of simple protectionism and corruption. The problem is that they pay much less. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2018-07-26 22:24 |
| #7 Perfectly logical from the Chinese point of view, the return voyage didn't bring competition it brought paid for garbage half of which probably was offloaded in the middle of the Pacific. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2018-07-26 21:23 |
| #6 Has anyone ever explained how you can ship garbage across the Pacific (and back) and make a profit? They only ship it part way. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2018-07-26 12:38 |
| #5 It does sound a bit preposterous as a business plan I thought it had something to do with the imbalance of trade between China and the USA. Those ships that would have returned empty to China might as well haul something for whatever pitiful profit can be made. In any case, the ships usually have to make a round trip. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2018-07-26 11:55 |
| #4 Has anyone ever explained how you can ship garbage across the Pacific (and back) and make a profit? It does sound a bit preposterous as a business plan - which suggests there is some sort of market distortion AKA government subsidy in play. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2018-07-26 11:50 |
| #3 The recycling scam shipped garbage on dirty ships for dirty industries Has anyone ever explained how you can ship garbage across the Pacific (and back) and make a profit? |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2018-07-26 11:15 |
| #2 In 1991 I was working to relocate a newspaper recycling facility. They made cereal-box grey cardboard out of newspapers. Since 1898. But most people still can't be bothered to separate recyclable from dirty diapers. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2018-07-26 08:07 |
| #1 The Chinese were doing this as long as there wasn't something more profitable to do, and it also encouraged us to hobble our own industries long-term with unrealistic demands. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2018-07-26 07:31 |