China and the Petroleum Industry: How it Affects Your Recycling

Nine Dragons: Zhang Yin’s Chinese Recycling Empire

We all do our best to recycle, making sure that our plastic, paper, and glass goes into the right bin and doing our part to help the Earth. 

But, you may not be aware how the United States recycling is interconnected with China. In 1995, a Chinese woman named Zhang Yin founded a company called Nine Dragons. At the time, China wanted more scraps and plastics to recycle into new products, and Nine Dragons focused on bringing more of these materials into China to capitalize on this need.

For the U.S., selling a portion of our recycling to China offered both profits and a chance to reduce municipal waste. By 2016, the United States was exporting 700,000 tons of recycled waste annually to China alone. Although many people think that their trash and recycling is processed locally, we were being helped by China. This long journey to China transports helped to have more plastic recycled and helped municipalities who sold the recycling to fund other projects.

The Downfall of China’s Recycling Industry

In 2015, the Chinese government became concerned with the amount of trash imported. A majority of these plastics were very difficult and expensive to process in plants, making them unprofitable. In addition, trash and recycling were being smuggled into China at very high rates. The waste-brokers who illegally smuggled waste tended to dump the product that wasn’t recyclable, causing more pollution in rural and farmland areas. These factors resulted in the Chinese government banning almost all imports in 2018.

Although this was a responsible decision for China, it harmed many municipalities in the United States that relied on exporting their recycling. Many of these municipalities have been overwhelmed with the amount of recycling they are forced to process. These excess materials include plastic wrap and other similar products, which are very difficult to recycle.

How Does the Petroleum Industry Impact This?

At the same time, the petroleum industry has exacerbated this problem. When China officially cut off the importation of waste from the United States, many companies struggled to find buyers of their plastic waste. This caused many to confront the unsustainable practices they had unwittingly endorsed. Laura Leebrick, a manager at a municipal waste plant in Oregon, was frustrated to learn that she had been “lying to the public unwittingly” when encouraging them to recycle. Many U.S. citizens and town councils still firmly believe that all of their recycling is being processed and recycled, and further, that is held the value it had when China was purchasing it. However, this is not the case. 

Recycled plastic has never been valuable, but the petroleum industry has spent millions of dollars on advertisements convincing the public that it is. According to an NPR study, the industry knew that recycling would not keep plastic out of landfills even in the 1970s. The process of sorting and melting down plastic is very expensive, and plastic degrades each time it is reused, making recycled plastic unprofitable. Producing new plastic is much cheaper, leading companies to elect to do this in order to save money. 

So, why did they deliberately mislead the public? According to Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, “If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment.” If the public is less concerned with the environmental impact of plastic, people will have no moral qualms continuing to purchase plastic products. This way, the petroleum industry can continue to make a profit from making and selling new plastic, without being seen as a threat to the environment.

Environmental and Economic Impact of Recycling

How does China’s ban on waste imports and the petroleum industry’s misinformation impact your recycling? The root of the problem is that without China’s willingness to buy waste, the United States is not equipped to process and recycle its plastic. The United States only recycles about 10 percent of its plastic waste, compared to 35 percent in many European countries. As previously mentioned, recycling plastic is not profitable, and there are no financial incentives for private waste companies to comply with recycling guidelines. This causes two main consequences:. municipalities lose money as they become overwhelmed with processing all of the plastic, or municipalities simply bury the plastic waste, degrading the environment. 

A Potential Solution to the Plastic Waste Issue

Although this situation seems dire, there are many organizations working on solutions. The idea of a circular economy, the idea that we should be keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems are two options. Concerns about ‘beach plastic’ have abounded over the last few years, referring to the plastic that makes its way into the ocean. TerraCycle, a company based in New Jersey, has tried to emphasize the circular economy by using beach plastic to make new products. While this is a start, it cannot be the only strategy in our attempt to fix the recycling crisis.

What you can do:

• Buy recycled! Buying items that you know are made from recycled materials not only directly helps the environment, but aids in creating a market drive to produce more recycled materials. 
• Lobby! Call your local representatives and ask for mandates on recycling.
• Do your research! While it may seem challenging, it is still important to recycle where you can, and knowing all of the resources that you have to recycle is an important part of this. Although this may seem discouraging, any plastic recycled is a benefit to your local environment!