The global trade in trash
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 10 June 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Asian countries have told the West to stop dumping its plastic waste on them - and it could spell the end of the recycling industry. China imposed a ban on imports last year, and now Malaysia and others are returning the stuff back its senders.
Manuela Saragosa speaks to Jim Puckett, founder of the Basel Action Network, who has successfully lobbied for the international trade in recyclable waste to be curtailed, because he believes it is actually bad for the environment. Arnaud Brunet, director of the Bureau of International Recycling, explains why he thinks that's an unfair depiction of his industry.
(Picture: A man scavenges for plastic for recycling at a garbage dump site in Bachok, Malaysia; Credit: Mohd Samsul Mohd Said/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Manuela Saragossa. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. In this edition, you know that plastic bottle you just put in the recycling bin? |
| 0:11.1 | Well, where does it really go? We thought, holy cow, you know, we are sending things to places where they don't have the capacity to deal with. it's going to wash down the rivers into the sea. |
| 0:21.7 | Coming up, the crisis in the global recycling industry, |
| 0:25.4 | does it still have a future? |
| 0:27.1 | It cannot go out of business. |
| 0:28.6 | It cannot end, and it shouldn't end because it's good. |
| 0:32.2 | It's a positive industry. |
| 0:33.9 | We hear why not everyone agrees. |
| 0:36.6 | That's all coming up here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:42.6 | There was a time when much of the world's discarded plastic bottles, paper and scrap metal was sold to China. |
| 0:50.2 | In China, it was recycled and used as a raw material in the country's manufacturing sector. |
| 0:55.9 | Then in January 2018, this happened. |
| 0:59.3 | China has notified the World Trade Organization that it will ban the import of 24 different types of garbage. |
| 1:06.6 | China says it's not taking in that garbage anymore. |
| 1:10.0 | A decision that has changed the way |
| 1:11.9 | countries around the world have to handle their waste. |
| 1:14.4 | For the last decade, about half of Australia's waste paper and plastic has been sold to China, |
| 1:20.9 | where it is recycled into new products, but not anymore. |
| 1:24.9 | The Chinese have really banned the importation of material from all around the world. |
| 1:30.3 | Towns are struggling to deal with piles of plastic paper, scrap metal, and other materials with no clear destination. |
| 1:37.1 | This comes after China stopped accepting the bulk of American recycling last year. |
| 1:41.7 | Suddenly, the world's biggest buyer of waste for recycling disappeared. |
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