Global Trade of Plastics: A painful stalemate between the developed and developing worlds
It has been almost two years since China decided to ban imports of plastic waste, and the world is feeling the effects. No longer able to ship their plastics to China, developed countries – including the U.S., Canada and much of Europe – all find themselves struggling to get rid of their recyclable plastic waste. Moreover, as the Nikkei Asian Review reports, their attempts to relocate plastic waste shipments to Southeast Asia have encountered fierce opposition from governments in the region. With Asian countries refusing to accept plastic waste exports and recyclable plastic waste quickly accumulating at home, people in the developed world have been dragged into a global waste management crisis.
GLOBAL PLASTIC WASTE SUPPLY CHAINS AND CHINA’S BAN
Today, the world is producing plastic at a faster pace than ever before. In the 1950s, the world produced two million tonnes of plastics every year. But by 2015, the annual figure reached 381 million tonnes. As a result, generation of plastic waste has been enormous. According to a recent study published in the journal Science Advance, the world has produced 6.3 billion metric tonnes of plastic waste in the past six decades. Researchers predict that if the current trend of plastic waste production continues, by 2050 there will be at least 15.2 billion metric tonnes of plastic waste globally. Deutsche Welle further reports that developed countries – especially the U.S., Germany, Australia, and Japan – are the world’s biggest producers of plastic waste.
To deal with accumulating plastic waste, developed countries have traditionally adopted an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach, relying on China as the main destination for their discarded plastics. From the 1990s to 2017, China accepted over 50 per cent of the world’s total used plastics. In 2017 alone, China imported seven million tonnes of plastic waste. In total, prior to China’s ban, 95 per cent of recyclable plastic waste in the European Union and 70 per cent of waste in the U.S. was exported to China. The total value of the Sino-U.S. plastic waste trade had generally been around $400 to $500 million USD annually.
Since China was at the heart of the global plastic waste trade, its decision to ban plastics imports has prompted a global waste management crisis. In January 2018, China enacted the “National Sword” policy to ban the import of plastics, cardboard boxes and other recyclable waste. As a result of this policy, by the beginning of 2019, China’s plastics imports have plummeted by 99 per cent. The ban has caused serious problems for developed countries. Japan, for instance, has struggled to deal with the 500,000 tonnes of plastic waste that it previously would have exported to China. Similarly, Australia is struggling to dispose of its 1.3 million tonne stockpile of recyclable waste.
COULD SOUTHEAST ASIA BE THE ALTERNATIVE?
Given the Chinese ban, Southeast Asian countries – most notably Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines – have emerged as alternative destinations for foreign shipments of plastic waste. According to the Nikkei Asian Review, immediately after the ban, American companies redirected 200,000 tonnes of plastic waste shipments from China to Malaysia. Similarly, Japan diverted the shipment of 190,000 tonnes of plastic waste from China to Thailand.
But the shift has caused significant problems, as Southeast Asian countries do not have the right recycling facilities or regulatory environments to manage the enormous plastic waste inflow. As Deutsche Welle reports, given the inadequacy of local recycling facilities, it is not uncommon for plastic imports intended for recycling to end up being tossed into rivers, oceans, and landfills. South China Morning Post further reveals that even within existing recycling plants, the way that plastic waste is processed has often caused serious health problems for local populations. For example, until this year, many plastic recycling plants in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur were still operating in violation of safe emission standards and without proper permits. Residents suffer from anxiety, fatigue, and lung-related problems caused by the toxic fumes. One local resident, Pua Lay Pent, described the situation: “People were attacked by toxic fumes, waking them up at night. Many are coughing a lot.”
As plastic waste imports have become overwhelming, Southeast Asian governments have been taking an increasingly hardline stance against plastic waste imports. After a diplomatic confrontation in June, Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte successfully pressured the Canadian government to take back 69 containers of waste. Indonesia and Malaysia are also seeking to send back thousands of tonnes of plastic waste to Europe and the U.S. In addition to sending back imported garbage, Thailand and Vietnam have even planned to ban foreign plastic waste imports to their countries by 2021 and 2025 respectively.
THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL WASTE MANAGEMENT
The pushback of Asian countries against plastic waste imports has sent the clear message that plastic waste management is not an issue that can be permanently outsourced. And yet, developed countries – including the U.S. – are far from ready to manage plastic waste on their own. The Atlantic notes that Americans have become used to offshoring the burden of waste management to low-paid workers overseas and have not developed their own effective mechanism for recycling plastic waste. According to the National Waste & Recycling Association, roughly 25 per cent of the items that end up in U.S. recycling bins are contaminated, toxic nonrecyclables – partly because Americans tend to have limited knowledge about what can and cannot be recycled. The fact that new plastics are relatively cheaper to manufacture has further discouraged American companies from collecting and processing recyclable plastics.
So far, the international community lacks any feasible long-term solution for addressing the plastic waste problem. While developing countries lack the infrastructure and regulatory capacity to enforce effective waste management, developed countries – which have been used to offshoring plastic waste – are also struggling to develop up-to-date waste management mechanisms. The ongoing disputes between Asia and the West over waste imports suggest that the international community remains too divided to come up with effective and holistic approaches for dealing with plastic waste. With the amount of plastic waste continuing to grow at an unprecedented rate, the global waste management crisis is likely to get worse.