China ban may hit local budget
A new study finds the country’s decision to stop importing used plastic will affect countries around the world.
The Rome-Floyd County Recycling Center is bracing for a likely trickle-down effect from China’s decision to stop accepting plastic waste from other countries.
“I think it could affect us,” County Manager Jamie McCord said. “It definitely will affect the waste industry as a whole.”
The ban is part of China’s larger crackdown on foreign garbage, which is viewed as a threat to health and environment. It went into effect Dec. 31, 2017, and the stockpiling trend looks to worsen, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances.
The change is forcing countries to rethink how they deal with plastic waste.
“This is a wake-up call,” said Amy Brooks, the first author on the study and a doctoral student in engineering at the University of Georgia. “Historically, we’ve been depending on China to take in this recycled waste and now they are saying no.”
In the meantime, Brooks said, more plastic waste is likely to get incinerated or sent to landfills.
McCord said paper markets already have been affected by the ban, although cardboard and newspaper remain profitable. Plastic recycling, he noted, has nearly always cost more than what the center could recover from selling it.
“It’s a double-edged sword, but we need to do it,” he said in response to questions during a Thursday night meeting of the SPLOST Citizen Advisory Committee. “I can’t tell you how much more landfill space we’ll have when our grandkids are grown — or even if they’ll be allowed to (dispose of trash in a) landfill.”
When the Walker Mountain Landfill opened in 1997, McCord said, it was projected to last about 30 years. Recent recalculations now estimate it will be around 2040 before the space is used up.
Meanwhile, nearby counties that have privatized their landfills are seeing them fill more quickly with truckedin waste.
“We know everything we do (at the recycling center) is not profitable, but it’s the right service for the right reason,” McCord said.
“We’re in control of our destiny when it comes to garbage,” he added with a grin.
Wealthy countries such as the United States, Japan and Germany have long sent their plastic recyclables to China. The study found China has imported more than 116 million tons — 45 percent of the world’s plastic waste — since 1992.
Some countries that have seen an increase in plastic waste imports since China’s ban — such as Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia — are already looking to enforce bans of their own because they are quickly becoming overburdened, Brooks said.
The study illustrates that plastic, which has a wide array of uses and formulations, is more difficult to recycle than other materials, such as glass and aluminum, said Sherri Mason, who was not involved in the study and is the chair of the geology and environmental sciences department at the State University of New York at Fredonia.
Many consumers attempt to recycle plastic products that can’t ultimately be recycled, Mason said. One solution could be to simplify the variety of plastics used to make products, she said.
“We have to confront this material and our use of it, because so much of it is single-use disposable plastic and this is a material that doesn’t go away,” Mason said. “It doesn’t return to the planet the way other materials do.”
The plastics import ban has attracted the attention of the U.S. recycling industry. The National Recycling Coalition said in a statement in midMay that it must “fundamentally shift how we speak to the public” and “how we collect and process” recyclables.
“We need to look at new uses for these materials,” said Marjorie Griek, the coalition’s executive director. “And how do you get manufacturers to design a product that is more easily recyclable.” Rome News-Tribune Staff Writer Diane Wagner contributed to this report.