Canadians are wonderfully warm-hearted
and civically-minded people. After all, nothing feels more satisfying than
making a charitable donation to an organization working to remove plastic waste
from the world’s oceans; those images of sickly or dead whales and dolphins
choking on plastic sandwich wrap and beach sandals are pretty hard to stomach
(so to speak!) We also love our politics, and
notwithstanding lobbying against carbon taxes, most Canadians would voice
their support for “polluter-pay” legislation (certainly as long as the
polluters are not ourselves, of course!)
And therein hangs a tale. We purchase
cute recycled plastic bracelets and dredge up “Free Willy” from our childhood movie
collection in the forlorn hope that we are somehow helping to stem the scourge
of mismanaged plastics. Not.
Consider this: according to the Wall
Street Journal, 2010 figures show that 8.8 million metric tons of mismanaged
plastic waste came from China with an estimated 3.53 million metric tons of it
ending up in the ocean. You can add a similar amount from the other Asiatic
coastal countries. The United States is also guilty of polluting oceans with
plastic, but at a mere 0.11 million metric tons. While one can argue that even
a pick-up truck load is too much, Canada doesn’t even make it to the chart. So
much for polluter-pay!
And so much for even taking care of our
own plastic waste: as little as three years ago, we used to rely on Asia – in
particular China – to take care of our Canadian plastic waste. We would sort it
away from our landfills, load it into containers and ship them across the
Pacific – despite the fact that plastic waste from the destination countries
themselves was being dumped into that very same ocean, and headed east to our
very own shores. Of course, China was being very cooperative, returning much of
our recycled plastic to Canada as manufactured goods so cheap as to undercut
the stuff we manufacture at home.
Now, China has decided to clean up its
act with its new “Green Sword” program, banning all imports of waste plastic.
Now, much of North American plastic waste is stranded and the comparatively few
American recyclers of waste plastic simply don’t have the capacity to handle it
all. And the prices have tanked, so to make matters worse, municipal recycling
programs are everywhere from challenged to permanently shut down. Even at the
16 to 43 Waste Management Corporation’s facility at the Redberry Lake Biosphere
Reserve, Site Manager Todd Linsley says that recyclable plastic wastes are being baled and stored under cover along
with paper and cardboard in hopes of future solutions: “The only other option
at the moment is putting it into the landfill, but we are doing everything within
our power to avoid that.”
The bigger the worser, apparently.
Journalist Michael Corkery
reported in the New York Times (March 19, 2019) that Philadelphia
is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in
an incinerator that converts waste to energy. “In Memphis, the international
airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can,
bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. And last month, officials in the
central Florida city of Deltona faced the reality that, despite their best
efforts to recycle, their curbside program was not working and suspended it.” According
to Corkery, hundreds of towns and cities across the country have either
cancelled recycling programs outright or limited the types of material they
accept.
Chris Cui, director of China Programs
for Closed Loop Partners, says companies in the United States and China can
help each other: “Recycling companies in China have long played the role of
outsourced recycling processors for countries such as the U.S.,” Closed Loop
Partners is an investment firm that provides capital to recycling-related
enterprises.
“Chinese companies have the capability
to process material at relatively low cost. The U.S., on the other hand, is far
more advanced in collection and transportation of recyclables, and this is a
gap,” Cui said from the stage of the Plastics Recycling Conference and Trade
Show, held in Maryland, USA, in late March. “The gap can be bridged by
connecting recycling operators in both countries, so they can share knowledge
and resources.”
According to an article in Plastics Recycling Update (Resource
Recycling Inc.), Closed Loop Partners launched its China Programs department
last year following China’s ban on imports of many categories of recyclables.
Director Cui continued: “… we see there is a huge opportunity after the ban for
us over there, and we want to build a bridge for the industry here in the U.S.
to work together with their counterparts in China and the rest of Asia.”
Cui suggested that plastic not currently
being recycled in the U.S. and China represents over $230 billion in potential
value. “ Chinese companies have a lot of challenges when they come to the U.S.,
culturally,” she said. “You can invest in a plant, but how do you make sure
that the management team is up and running? How do you make sure you know how
to work with the local state, the local government? How can you identify which
area is the best for you to set up your plant? You have to consider the
transportation, do you have enough feedstock, if there’s any tax incentive
opportunity zone, those are the kinds of value you can add to the Chinese
players that are coming over here.”
Just as our own failures to make any
real attempts to deal with fresh water pollution and climate change are increasingly
threatening Canada’s economy and our way of life, it appears that decades of
inaction on properly addressing waste reduction and materials recycling may
well be the next major challenge to building and maintaining a healthy society.
It would be ironic if, having unloaded our waste plastic problem onto China for
decades, we are forced to allow them to provide solutions within our own
country. We really do need to be careful, and to do better.
Peter
Kingsmill is a recipient of the Governor General’s Conservation Award and past
chair and founder of the Redberry Lake Biosphere Reserve in Saskatchewan
