Early this year, the Chinese government made the conscious decision to ban imports of plastic waste from the UK. This decision was made in the light of the campaign named ‘foreign garbage’ (yang laji). In the space of just 6 years, (according to Greenpeace) the UK has exported 2.7 million tonnes of plastic waste to China and Hong Kong, evidencing that without these trading partners, the UK would find it extremely difficult to deal with their waste and subsequently environmental pollution.
So what happens next? Well in the UK, the bans put in place by the Chinese government have already caused issues at the very few recycling plants that stand. One report has been that the plastic waste is building up in yards because there is nowhere to ship them. By relying on China for 20 years, the UK have now become vulnerable to large-scale waste issues. Where Britain’s approximate shipments of plastic to China has been estimated at 50,000 tonnes per year, the UK government are now having to look for alternative methods as to how our waste can be dealt with. Even though the UK government have tried methods such as the charge on carrier bags and looking at other countries such as Vietnam to export their plastic, these efforts are not enough to suffice for the loss that China has brought to them.
