Now that China’s no longer taking out our trash,
Malaysia is shipping some 3,300 tons of contaminated plastic scrap back to the U.S., U.K. Canada, Australia and other countries of origin, as reported by the Associated Press and others.
"Whoever sends their waste to Malaysia, we will send it back," Environment Minister Yeo Bee Yin told reporters on Tuesday, declaring the foreign shipments to be "garbage … traded under the pretext of recycling."
"Even though we are a small country, we cannot be bullied," she added. "Malaysians, like any other developing countries, have a right to clean air, clean water, sustainable resources and a clean environment to live in — just like citizens of developed nations."
Yeo's announcement should come as no surprise to anyone following post-China waste trends. In the wake of last year's ban, Malaysia, along with other Southeast Asian countries, became the world's foremost destination for plastic exports. The ensuing waste tide prompted Malaysia to impose a ban on further shipments — but, as covered in Scrap Collector, plastic scrap traders have concocted clever (and sometimes illegal) means of circumventing restrictions.
...According to Jan Dell, founder of nonprofit The Last Beach Cleanup, the U.S. exported 3,310 metric tons of plastic scrap to Malaysia in March 2019 alone — with the bulk of shipments coming from:
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- New York City (32.7%)
- Los Angeles (26.6%)
- San Francisco (13%)
- Norfolk VA (11.6%)
- Charleston SC (6%),
- Savannah GA (4.5%)
- and so on.
These are port cities, so they’re probably shipping it out from all over the country. The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (.org) emphasizes that there’s a world of difference between high-value scrap and contaminated, useless waste, despite industry research for the “holy grail” of chemically breaking plastic down into its component parts (refined hydrocarbons, monomers and polymers) for remanufacture feedstock.
Dell says current reportage covers just the tip of the iceberg.
"In March 2019, the U.S. exported 60 million kg to 61 countries, with some going farther to new frontiers of Senegal, Bangladesh and Laos," she commented to Waste Dive via email. "Malaysia has received about 10 million kg (2,000 shipping containers) of plastic waste from the U.S. in the first three months of 2019."
"No U.S. city or citizen can look at the piles of waste in Malaysia and believe that we should be causing that, even inadvertently," Dell added. "From a business perspective, the harms caused by exporting plastic waste are a violation of company Codes of Conduct and creates a potential future liability for cleanup."
For David Biderman, executive director and CEO at SWANA, Malaysia's move is a cue for the U.S. industry to bolster its domestic infrastructure — a possibility discussed at this year's Plastics Recycling Conference. "The announcement by Malaysia, coupled with the recent amendment to the Basel Convention that will make exporting recovered plastic more difficult in the future, should be a signal that we need more domestic markets for recovered plastic, and should be exploring a range of options for not only how to recycle plastic, but to reduce our consumption of plastic"…
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Article by Rina Li for the ScrapCollector column’s Friday round-up of insights and stories from across the week, at www.wastedive.com