China’s stance will make us greener
China is refusing to take the world’s rubbish any longer, including New Zealand plastic. This move once again casts doubts on New Zealand’s claim to be a clean and green country. It also highlights the fact that recycling isn’t always a sign of ecological virtue.
China’s campaign against yang laji, or ‘‘foreign garbage’’, is doing the world a favour. China has been the world’s rubbish tip for scrap plastic. The Americans, for instance, last year exported 1.4 million tonnes of plastic to China, worth about a billion dollars. New Zealand sent about $8m of plastic.
The effect on New Zealand is under debate. Some forms of plastic recycling must be done in huge plants which allow economies of scale. Some believe New Zealand will just find other markets for its waste plastic in Third World countries such as Malaysia and Thailand. Some of the plastic, however, is likely to end up in landfills there.
At this point the problems of recycling become uncomfortably clear. We feel virtuous when we recycle because we think recycling always means re-use, but it doesn’t. Some believe China’s move makes it more likely that more plastic recycling could be done economically in New Zealand. But even if this happens, re-use of all our waste plastics seems unlikely.
New Zealand’s ‘‘100 per cent pure’’ reputation takes another knock when we realise we are using other countries to dump our rubbish. But it also raises doubts about our own integrity as ‘‘green’’ householders.
Recycling can only be part of the move to save the planet from drowning in rubbish. In fact recycling seems even to have encouraged us to become more wasteful consumers than before.
We continue to buy massive amounts of stuff wrapped up in planet-killing plastic and other unnecessary packaging, perhaps under the illusion that it will all be re-used. The result is a growing mountain of garbage going to the tip.
The supermarkets have laudably joined the fight to reduce the use of single-use plastic bags. But they continue to wrap too many goods in plastic that won’t be recycled.
And this underlines that being a good eco-citizen of the world is much tougher than many of us realise. Recycling a smallish part of our rubbish goes only a small way towards saving the world.
Some are now even saying that the campaign against plastic bags is not just tokenism, it’s an excuse for avoiding taking more difficult action.
What should be done? Sellers must find new ways of repackaging common items such as meat. Consumers can help the process by asking for sellers to wrap meat in paper rather than plastic.
How this will work in practice is unclear.
It is fascinating to see that China, meanwhile, is shifting its reputation from one of the world’s planet-burners to something like ecological virtue.
Part of the reason it has stopped taking certain waste products is that contaminants in the imported garbage were polluting the environment.
China, the land of toxic smog and massive greenhouse gas emissions, is having to clean up its act. And that should make other countries like New Zealand do likewise.