In 2017, China banned all plastic from entering the country. This single decision has disrupted the entire global flow of recycling. Stuff that once found its way to China is now ending up in Vietnam, Thailand, and most of all, Malaysia.
But those countries can’t process the amount of plastic China used to, and waste from the US, Europe, Japan, and beyond is piling up in small mountains.
China’s ban didn’t break the system, but it revealed just how broken it really is. In episode one of our Quartz’s video series Because China, they go to Malaysia, Shanghai, and New Jersey to figure out what is going on in the wild world of recycling.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on world leaders to redouble their efforts to fight climate change. The President was speaking at the 7th Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Japan. He says climate change poses a serious threat to Africa’s development & prosperity.
Bar chart race: the countries with the largest cumulative CO2 emissions since 1750. Rankings as of the start of 2019: 1) US – 397 GtCO2 2) China – 214 3) former USSR – 180 4) Germany – 90 5) UK – 77 6) Japan – 58 7) India – 51 8) France – 37 9) Canada – 32 10) Poland – 27
Chart by Carbon Brief based on code by John Burn-Murdoch.
