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.
From disappearing species to plastic pollution and our disastrously weak attempts to recycle it, here’s what the top voices on climate change – from Sir David Attenborough to Jane Goodall to Greta Thunberg – have to say about the planet’s escalating biodiversity crisis.
“We’ve stolen our children’s future – and we’re still stealing it.” –Jane Goodall.
Sir David Attenborough, Jane Goodall and Greta Thunberg are joined in this global call for action by Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, the United Nations’ Cristiana Pasca Palmer, Daniela Fernandez of Sustainable Ocean Action, Brune Poirson, Malek Sukkar and Heather Koldewey.
Lead Researcher and Oceanographer, Laurent Lebreton, discusses the mystery of missing ocean plastic and our new explanation for its whereabouts.
There is a vast difference between the several hundreds of thousands of tons of floating plastic in the ocean and the millions of tons entering annually. By creating models for the path of ocean plastic, it was observed that most river emissions are likely being filtered by coastlines and beaches, with a small fraction going offshore. This small fraction turns out to be relatively old and likely not degrading very quickly – thus, showing persistence. This new understanding highlights the importance of both source reduction and cleanup of legacy ocean plastic.
