The ban on the imports of waste paper and plastic in China provided an opportunity for American plants that process recyclables.
United States-based paper mills invested more on their businesses to expand their capacity as they grab the opportunity of cheap scrap. Some of the facilities invested on their own recycling machines so that they can process their own scraps. Investors of these companies included Chinese business owners that are interested in having access to waste paper or flattened bottles to be used for manufacturing.
Neil Seldman, the co-founder of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a Washington-based organization that helps improve recycling programs, said that the situation is a perfect moment for recycling in the United States.
China is the world's largest destination for paper, plastic, and other recyclables before they decided to end the imports In January last year. After the ban, China decided to send some of its scraps in Malaysia. However, the country decided to impose strict policies in accepting and recycling products from overseas. The Malaysian government raids unlicensed plastic recyclers as the country seeks to control the growing illegitimate industry.
Malaysia's Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment, and Climate Change, who attended the raid and had invited journalists to watch, Yeo Bee Yin, said that it is illegal and against the Environmental Quality Act because they do not have licenses and they are polluting. The minister said that wealthy nations should stop using her country as a trash dump.
According to 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, there's no magical land of recycling with rainbows and unicorns. It's much grittier than that.
The increasing capacity of recycling plants in the United States might solve its own garbage disposal problem. Bourque said that recycling of scraps including paper, tin, and aluminum saves a ton of energy and natural resources. He acknowledged that approximately 4 percent of the non-bottle mixed plastic that the Ecology Center gathers are non-recyclable. He said that they are sending those plastics to landfills because of the lack of destination for recycling without causing additional harm to the environment.
Bourque explains that they would much rather see them in a landfill then being exported to a foreign country where they don't know what the final destination will be. With the expanding recycling plants in the United States, the company might lessen garbage sent to dumpsites.
