Name: The global crisis in recycling
Uploaded: 2020-03-17
Duration: 15 min 29 s
Description: With the world drowning in plastic, the need for recycling is more acute than ever. But the industry that handles all that waste is on the verge of collapse.

[ MUSIC ] People diligently segregate their waste, thinking that the waste will be going to somewhere that can be recycled as will be good for the environment. If it's not reused and recycled, where does it end up? You can see on the labels of the containers. They are not from this country. They're from Ireland, from France, from United States. They used to just put it in the container and ship it to China. But now, China has closed its doors It's come to South East Asia. How can we absorb the plastic, the waste of the rest of the world? [ MUSIC ] In January, we travelled to Malysia in order to try answer one question, how bad is the plastic's crisis in the world? What happens to the Plastics that we generate every day and then deposit in our recycling bins. [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] So here we have our weekly delivery of recyclables that our private carters are picking up from our households here in Smithtown. And right off the bat we're seeing unfortunately a few things that people with the best of intentions are throwing in with their recyclables that aren't recyclable. In America, what happens now is that most recycling centers take only the very best. Plastics, and that's the numbers one or two which you'll see marked in the little triangle that appears on most package of bottles. A yogurt container which is a five, despite our best efforts of saying that we take one's and two's, people continues to put in things that. Aren't necessarily recyclable, this cooler. Unfortunately, the contamination we see here degrades the overall quality of the materials that were seeking markets for. That means it's going somewhere, either to be incinerated or landfills and we're ultimately paying for that through our programs. For the little [ MUSIC ] Plastic that is recycled. It can be put in containers and shipped all the way across the world. [ MUSIC ] In the 90s, China became the recycler to the world. [ MUSIC ] And they built up an enormous infrastructure of recycling. They effectively became a godsend, especially for the US. So at one time, this was the plastics and the commingled separation system. It would go up, and we have a electric magnet up here. It would take out the steel cans, soup cans, cat food cans, soda cans, stuff like that. And then from there, we'll break the glass out of the glass then fall through, and that'd be another product. So bottles, milk containers, and they used to be bins under here for the contaminants to fall into, because. Collected plastics one through seven. And that was essentially every plastic that you could think of. And we saw an increase of about 20 % and the volume of material that we actually collected and recycled. At the end of 2017 China effectively blocked plastic. This has really thrown recycling into turtle harbor. Because it's expensive to live United States and expensive to manufacture United States. The manufacturing goes somewhere else. And unfortunately, semi recycling was it's expensive to run a recycling facility here. In United States, so we put it on a barge, or send it on a ship, or send it somehow to another country to get recycled for us to come back. [ MUSIC ] Nobody really can tell you where the products go right now. And you say, you recycled it, well, where did it go? What happened was, all the recyclers in China Had to scramble to find other places in order to continue their business, and they moved to neighboring countries, one of which was Malaysia. What I've observed is that there are many factories. They have a lot of waste to process. And they have even more waste now than they had previously Plastic scraps that plastic waste there was supposed to be recycled is now dumped or recycled illegally in a developing country. So, as Malaysians since enough of Mid of 2018 we have been receiving a lot of reports on illegal factories coming up to deal with this illegal smuggling in plastic waste. As a number of the recyclers open in these small towns, the locals began to feel the effect. What was happening was that the factories were burning plastic overnight. To the people that are affected that live near the factories they are suffering from health problems. They smell burning plastic most nights And they are very worried about their health [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] What was happening was the factories were burning plastic overnight. They were burning stocks that they will not going to actually recycle needed to get rid of. So, the doctor had told us in fact that this was not that uncommon. And that there were a number of cases like this that he was seeing in his hospital. There was a tremendous outcry in this particular town. That left of great bitterness between the local residents and The recycling industry that was just getting off the ground. [ MUSIC ] The awareness of this situation is not very high. They get here they will be taken from the port in containers to the factories. You can see on the labels of the containers, they're not from this country .>> There are ernomous amounts of plastics that they simply can't recycle, and the plastics are arriving way too fast and in too great a quantity for them to. Actually processed. So much of it is just dumped in what is essentially a landfill but it's very, very unregulated, filled with this kind of toxic slush of Melted plastic. It's basically seeping into the farmland and also into the river. It sits right on one of the main rivers in Malaysia called the Buddha River, which feeds into a lot of the farms. Because the plastics are mixed and contaminated If you want to make money, the only way for you to make it with a conventional process is not to complain to the sender for example, you're going to wash it and then your effluent is not only treated because the moment you have water treatment system to treat those, you are not making money anymore. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Steve Wang was a self made multi millionaire, made a fortune off recycling plastic [ FOREIGN ] [ INAUDIBLE ] Moved to LA, had six kids, and opened factories all over the world. He really was kind of a plastics recycling tycoon. Recycling is not only about collection. Recycling is about separations and in the end, actually put this scrap plastic into the machine. It came crashing down. When China closed its doors to plastics. He's closed almost all his factories at this point he thinks is Business has probably gone down about 90 %. Base material for years just because China can stop. And at this point what he does is he travels around mostly Europe. Buying up plastic in quantities and then selling it to little recycling outfits around Southeast Asia and he tries to broker deals. So you'll be able to modify these procedures yeah Okay. This is actually how the global recycling business works. It is not done in the board rooms of global corporations. There was a lot of skepticism among recyclers because they're already sitting on stockpiles of recycled. Plastic pellets that they just can't sell From Prague [ UNKNOWN ] And there is another factor at play. And it's a very important one and trying to understand the Global Plastics Crisis. And that is that it's just very cheap these days to make virgin plastic Since last couple of years, prime plastic has been coming down in price. So there's a vicious circle. And the impact is most of the materials that we don't recycle is because of financial reasons. Periodically all the plastic can be recycled. All of them. Because of cost of separation, because of cost of import, or because of cost of shipping, and in the end, the cost of doing this is more higher than prime material. What these people are doing They are bringing huge amounts of waste plastic. They put it through the tap of water. And they this water and chemical they were turning. And so someone that clean plastic will float up And then the dirt that sticks at the bottom on any stretch. So they can only extract very small amount. The rest just has to find Langfield or find an incinerator [ MUSIC ] And then all this wastewater end up in our rivers And you know it's fine. When the government looks the authorities at the port look at these containers, they realize that this it's not clean plastic. And the people who export it also don't want it back so they are stuck here. I think Malaysians are not trying to finger point anyone. This thing actually comes as a shock to everyone. After China actually closed their door, we realized how much of a waste we have in the whole world. [ SOUND ] Do the ways that you have diligently separated and I mean, is it overseas? Or is it locally recycle ?. For most American cities, it's very expensive to recycle plastic. And there's really no way that they can sell it for much money anymore. Recycling today is in trouble. Hopefully it's stabilizing in certain areas of the country, it's on life support. I think most people would agree that you know, it's it's always appropriate to recycle. I mean, you know, we have a responsibility to our environment, in our community, but unfortunately those reasons are weighing heavily On certain communities. I'd like to see some better product, stewardship from the manufacturers of these various items and producers of these containers. I think that manufacturers and people that are making profits, they bear a certain responsibility. Educating people that consume and purchase their products. What the whole world lack of right now is the tracking of whether or not those plastics are recycled properly, locally, or abroad. We don't want to give up plastic. It's extremely valuable to us in our lives, and yet, we have to find a way. To make it work for the planet, I'm hopeful for the future of recycling. I have to be, it's my job. I'm also not willing to believe that we can't do a better job than we're currently doing. We have to minimize the use of plastic, and then each country has to process their own waste. [ SOUND ] Because small countries with capability to, to protect the environment will have them [ SOUND ]

The global crisis in recycling

Magazine

The need for recycling is more acute than ever.

Where does the world's plastic recycling go?

With the world drowning in plastic, the need for recycling is more acute than ever. But the industry that handles all that waste is on the verge of collapse.