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'Moment of reckoning': US cities burn recyclables after China bans imports
The Guardian ^ | 21 Feb 2019

Posted on 02/21/2019 4:09:04 PM PST by Lurch Addams

The conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes, plastic bottles, yoghurt containers and other items into recycling bins.

But in the past three months, half of these recyclables have been loaded on to trucks, taken to a hulking incineration facility and burned, according to the city’s government.

It’s a situation being replicated across the US as cities struggle to adapt to a recent ban by China on the import of items intended for reuse.

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: china; environment; garbage; pollutioj; recycling
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To: Lurch Addams

I was involved with solid waste and recycling from 2012-2015 when China first stopped taking plastics. We still put out our recycling bins so the community would feel good about itself.

You know recycling is not cost effective if the Chinese can’t even afford to do it any longer.


21 posted on 02/21/2019 4:50:50 PM PST by shotgun
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To: Lurch Addams

If the ecofreaks could figure out away to make us eat garbage they would make Governments pass all the Laws they need


22 posted on 02/21/2019 4:55:11 PM PST by butlerweave
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To: lee martell

My spouse is a true believer in recycling.

Apart from metal, no point.


23 posted on 02/21/2019 4:55:35 PM PST by wally_bert (You're bringing The Monk down, man!)
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To: BobL; All

Progress! Next step: burn in back yard.


24 posted on 02/21/2019 4:58:06 PM PST by old-ager (anti-new-ager)
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To: Lurch Addams

My cousin’s husband is as liberal as the day is long. I was shocked to watch him throw obvious recycle items, into the regular trash. He told me he was talking to a childhood friend, whose job is to drive a truck five days a week, picking up from the recycle bins, and dropping the collection at . . . the county landfill ;)


25 posted on 02/21/2019 5:12:27 PM PST by jttpwalsh
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To: Lurch Addams

China was mostly dumping it anyway...


26 posted on 02/21/2019 5:23:46 PM PST by Ingtar
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To: Clutch Martin

I don’t think they will be burning it in Seattle.

All that old trash is, like a fossil, like right?

No fossil fuel.


27 posted on 02/21/2019 5:35:05 PM PST by Scrambler Bob (You know that I am full of /S)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar
But everyone felt SO GOOD with themselves that they were doing their part to save the planet.

And the recycling companies feel REALLY GOOD about the big money they're making for performing an unnecessary "service."

28 posted on 02/21/2019 5:36:35 PM PST by Bernard Marx
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To: lee martell
That happens in the states too, just not as often, so far.

Those under the rule of the NYC Sanitation Dept. Garbage Police might differ.

29 posted on 02/21/2019 5:41:05 PM PST by Roccus (When you talk to a politician...ANY politician...always say, "Remember Ceausescu")
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To: lee martell
if you throw all that stuff in your garbage, it costs you more money for the garbage service....so there's that......

I think the ultimate solution is to REDUCE packaging...

..and we need to go back to the old ways..

...you kept your tv for 30 yrs, at least we did..

..you had hand me downs for all your kids.

..you kept your canning jars and your tools and your cars for a long time....

but that would go against the god of consumerism so the cabal will never go for it.....too much $$$$$ involved...

30 posted on 02/21/2019 5:44:44 PM PST by cherry
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To: cherry

Reducing packaging. Yes!
I do a lot of online shopping, now that I’m comfortable with it, and I’m amazed at the amount of packaging that goes with every Amazon purchase. I get why they do it, for protection, and confidentiality. I’m not sure there are any better methods that don’t imply taking a gamble with far less wrapping.

I don’t want to receive a cardboard box full of crushed glass when I was expecting a table lamp. Maybe there is some middle ground we don’t yet know about.
If Drones become more common, the packaging might even increase, to protect it from nosy or angry birds.


31 posted on 02/21/2019 5:56:12 PM PST by lee martell
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To: Lurch Addams

So what we do is this...

We grind the stuff up and mix it with a little dirt.

Then we compress it into bricks and dump the bricks off the coast.

We expand our borders naturally that way. All the way across the oceans.

We can put a tax on people that don’t produce enough garbage to make sure they do their share.


32 posted on 02/21/2019 5:58:47 PM PST by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)
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To: RedMonqey

I was thinking they were burning our trash for energy. But, regardless, WHO CARES !!!!

What’s important is that feeling of well-being one gets when putting their sorted trash into recycling bins!!!! It’s just like owning a Tesla - you just plug it into the wall and watch - see NO POLLUTION!!!! Nothing yucky comes out of the wall, or the tail pipe!!!! What could be more ‘wonderful’.


33 posted on 02/21/2019 6:01:27 PM PST by BobL (I eat at McDonald's and shop at Walmart - I just don't tell anyone.)
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To: Lurch Addams

I pay for private pickup, so into the bag and off to the dump/incinerator. The town wanted me to clean all the cans and bottles and always had the trash Nazi.


34 posted on 02/21/2019 6:51:47 PM PST by dgbrown
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To: Lurch Addams

Solent Geen might be made of people, but at least its made of Americians right here in the Good Old US of A!!!


35 posted on 02/21/2019 7:46:39 PM PST by griffin
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To: griffin

Oops. Soylent. Guess im getting old and need to be recycled.


36 posted on 02/21/2019 7:50:17 PM PST by griffin
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To: BobL

[To answer your question: Yes. Garbage separation was never intended for ‘recycling’, at least regarding paper and plastic (since they sent it all to China to burn),]


Actually, it is recycled in China. There are people who make a living there from collecting garbage off the sidewalks - cardboard, cans and glass and plastic bottles. I have read that this is a perennial gripe among homeowners there. The garbage pickers leave a mess after grabbing the stuff they can sell. It makes sense to take American garbage because it’s fairly well-sorted and China-bound shipping rates are cheap since US-bound container ships have to go back mostly-empty to Chinese ports. Xi’s clampdown on US garbage is illogical and stupid, like a lot of Communist Party policies. But when you’re sitting on a gold mine of some of the highest average IQ people on the planet, you can be an insane arsonist and still show economic growth, especially when it’s catch-up growth based on adopting somebody else’s inventions.


37 posted on 02/21/2019 7:52:04 PM PST by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room.)
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To: Not A Snowbird

[We had a converse with somebody who works in recycling. He said China is refusing to take it because there’s too much non-recycle material mixed in.]


That’s complete bullshit. Chinese companies want it and are willing to pay for it. Xi Jinping has stopped it via government edict for the same reason that, alone among countries in the world, China has banned motorcycles in its cities - they think it’s detrimental to China’s image. These hereditary aristocrats are prideful and insane, but as blue bloods with absolute power, no one in China can contradict them publicly, let alone countermand them.


38 posted on 02/21/2019 7:59:41 PM PST by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room.)
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To: Lurch Addams

Bring back return deposit bottles

Develop other return deposit packaging.


39 posted on 02/21/2019 8:04:38 PM PST by fella ("As it was before Noah so shall it be again,")
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To: wally_bert

Glass


40 posted on 02/21/2019 8:08:01 PM PST by AFreeBird
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