Malaysia will return contaminated plastic waste to the countries that shipped it | Hacker News Reader

Malaysia will return contaminated plastic waste to the countries that shipped it

cnn.com

206 pointsDoreenMichele145 comments

This is a good thing. I had no idea we weren't recycling our plastic and just shipping it across the world, only to get dumped in a forest or into the ocean.

We need to stop producing so much plastic. We need laws to standardize plastics so that only purely recyclable plastics exist and no more single-use plastics, or compostable containers. Anything else should be banned.

I don't care if it runs some companies out of business because the costs are too high. I would rather those companies fail than keep piling up with all this sickening useless and ultimately poisonous garbage from single-use plastics.

We should also make it illegal to ship our garbage outside of the country. That will force us to deal with our own problems.

Also it seems likely at this point that the danger has been wildly underestimated.

The rallying cry against plastic used to be that "it takes hundreds of years to break down".

But now we know that when it breaks down, it gets worse. Microplastics are suspected to be bioaccumulating, carrying poisons and bacteria, and possibly could get into cells like asbestos. And the only way to dispose of the stuff that won't eventually become microplastic is incineration - putting all that carbon into the atmosphere, along with other unpleasant combustion products.

Yes, as usual those of us that told us the risk was low or non-existent were wrong again. How often do we have to be duped by so-called experts before we realize that the "experts" have actually no idea how to calculate risk, and that we can't rely on their "assurances"? It goes both ways, where scientists told us that salt and high fat diets were causing heart disease and now both of those have been walked back.

The experts were working with the facts as they were known at the time. Microplastic wasn't obvious. Most things, when they break down, aren't harmful. This isn't a problem of experts. This is a problem of hubristically creating a never seen before material and assuming it would have no impact.

Which experts are you talking about? Before 10 years ago or so I don't remember ever seeing a discussion about plastics in the environment one way or the other.

Problem is that you're putting all "experts" in one bucket. There has been "experts" talking against the use of plastic and single-use for a very long time, but by attacking all experts like you're doing, you make it sound that they are the same people. Clearly, environmentalist were not the ones promoting plastic?

> and possibly could get into cells like asbestos

To be clear, there is no current evidence that microplastics might share any mechanisms with asbestos/CNTs/etc, right?

I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I do know that people with cystic fibrosis have a bad habit of dying of infections from microorganisms that are usually not deemed infectious for most humans. When you google the names of the microorganisms in question, some of them are used by scientists for bioremediation of petrochemical spills.

In other words, they eat petrochemicals. They also think people with CF are tasty as hell while not much caring for "normal" humans, which looks rather suspect to me.

So I suspect that the defect in the CFTR allows plastics and petrochemicals generally, plus metals, to accumulate at higher than normal rates in the CF population. I have run this hypothesis past a guy with a PhD in Biology who suggested that it was not simply straight up crazy talk. He said the function of the CFTR should have some implication for how the body processes metals, IIRC.

(He's a member of HN and is more than welcome to chime in for accuracy's sake if he happens to see this remark, realizes DoreenMichele used to post as Mz and I am talking about him -- hello, nice person with PhD in Biology, and thank you for the awesome feedback.)

Our oceans are getting increasingly polluted with plastic and we increasingly see, for example, dead whales on beaches who are full of plastic and these two things are deemed not unrelated, from what I gather. So it seems that there comes a point past which "normal" humans with a normal CFTR who do not have CF may be unable to avoid similar bioaccumulation of plastics/petrochemicals and other toxic chemicals as I am hypothesizing drive some deadly infections in the CF population.

So, perhaps we can extrapolate from the experiences of the CF community that as our world gets increasingly toxic, it will negatively impact human health generally, including, but not limited to, making us more prone to infection from microogranisms that were never a problem before.

Arguably, this is probably already happening and may be contributing to the rise of Super Bugs. It may not be merely overuse of antibiotics causing this problem. It may also be widespread environmental changes, including but not limited to the increasing prevalence of microplastics across the entire world.

The life expectancy of people with cystic fibrosis in the west doubled in the last 40 years. Using them as a marker things are getting worse sounds questionable.

I'm not using them as a marker for things getting worse. That wasn't my point at all.

When people have chronic illnesses, they often times become immunocompromised, meaning their immune system weakens so much, microorganisms that are normally harmless get the opportunity to infect the host. That's why you see odd microorganisms.

Just because you see microorganisms in people that are also in petrochemical spills does not mean they are consuming petrochemicals within us. Many organisms have multiple metabolic pathways, meaning they can break different things down to get the energy they need. Heck, so many typically aerobic microbes don't even need oxygen all the time, producing lactic acid or alcohol instead.

I understand your concern for the unknown, but be careful about spreading information when you aren't yourself informed or sure of what you are saying.

I'm an environmental studies major who has a diagnosis of atypical cystic fibrosis. Avoiding petrochemicals has been beneficial to me.

I think I am informed and sure of what I am saying. I think I adequately qualified the statement to make sure it doesn't constitute misinformation.

As a science major you should be well acquainted with the dangers of anecdotal evidence. Making claims about cystic fibrosis on the basis of what is "beneficial for you" is bad science. Even with the qualifying your statement, you're implying causalities that you can't possibly justify.

It's a discussion in an online forum, not a thesis for a PhD.

If you can't engage the actual point with a meaty counterargument instead of a personal cheap shot, then you are the one failing at science, not me.

I would be thrilled to absolute pieces if anyone on HN would debate the actual points I sometimes try to make (or otherwise engage me in meaty discourse) instead of being dismissive of me personally. The shallow personal attacks are vacuous and tiresome and in no way help me firm up my understanding of the problem space.

Since I study CF because my actual life literally depends upon it, it would be a tremendous boon to my life to get meaty engagement on such topics. But that never, ever happens. Instead, I get what looks an awful lot like Mansplaining and sounds an awful lot like the subtext is "Meh, girls don't know nothing, so I can't be arsed to come up with anything to say about the actual hypothesis proposed. Besides, I'm not actually that knowledgeable."

Serious question: based on what we now know, does it make sense to revisit incineration of plastics particularly if we can update the stacks to do a better job of scrubbing?

Probably gasification instead, which is much cleaner but more energy intensive.

Incineration still produces tons of ash and chemical waste.

Then some more thinking on how to handle resulting gases.

Nordic countries incinerate almost all non-recycled municipal waste, to the point that they import waster from other countries to keep the incinerators well fed.

Any insights how this is handled there? They are pretty famous for having some of the strictest environmental and health regulations, so I assume these issues have solutions.

I wonder if it could be low-oxygen burned to non-poisonous charcoal? That could be put into the environment without toxicity. (Such as making Terra Preta soil.)

Plastic is our new collective "Chernobyl".

One HBO show and boom: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=chernobyl

If the US actually cared about any of this, sure. Unfortunately recycling is a burden placed on consumers to allow corporations to maximize profits.

> We should also make it illegal to ship our garbage outside of the country. That will force us to deal with our own problems.

This is what all the countries should do. The new EU parliament is turning green so I hope we can get such regulation to prevent trash to leave the EU.

The main reason it was done was because all the manufacturing is in China. All those ships bring things here and it was intended to make the trip back more efficient economically by shipping them back full as well. I'm all for less plastic but this is also just a larger issue of consumerism. We need to buy and ship less but that is a cultural change that seems unlikely (unfortunately).

Cultural change happens when the externalities are priced in. See Denmark and Netherlands for example. The biking and public transport culture is a direct consequence of pricing in road maintenance, congestion, and other externalities into the price of cars and gas.

Not really. People in Denmark (Copenhagen mostly) and the Netherlands cycle and take public transport because it is the easiest and most convenient option. If it was the price of car use we should see the same effect in f.ex Norway, but we don’t.

In Denmark, new cars are taxed at 150% of the price of the tax. You pay more in taxes than the entire price of the car.

In The Netherlands it's 40-50% for most cars yet big cars are still seen as a status symbol. Thankfully the cycling infrastructure here is fantastic so I can almost always use my bike :)

> yet

The more difficult to obtain something is, the more it will be seen as a status symbol. It's always been that way.

Well, that and the fact that those two countries are dense, flat, and have decent cycling weather.

if you call half a year of rain, wind and/or snow decent... flat and dense is enough.

Even if it doesn't change cultures, at least it provides some proportional amount of money to (try to) fix the problem, rather than ignoring it or digging into the general tax fund.

Shipping stuff across the world isn't as bad as you think it is. The per-ton fuel efficiency of a modern cargo ship is astoundingly high; far, far better than a tractor-trailer or even a train. Concentrating manufacturing of a particular thing in one place is more efficient; we've been doing this for millennia now (stuff was being traded between Asia and Europe even in Roman times).

The problem is not producing it but pretending to recycle it. If we just buried it in well maintained local landfills, it would effectively never get into the environment and would never be a problem.

You're making a common mistake of thinking that an environmental problem must be solved at all costs. There's no point spending more to solve a problem than the cost the problem will cause. The only reason the environment is important is because it provides value to us humans. We don't need to protect it beyond that. We don't need to ban quarries for breaking ancient rocks into small pieces of gravel. They're permanently destroying the environment, but not a part of it that we have any need to preserve.

No. Microplastics are everywhere in the environment. Our fish are eating this. It's getting into our food chain and we need to stop this. We are poisoning ourselves the same way the Romans poisoned themselves with lead pipes.

They wouldn't be in the sea if they were in a landfill. They get into the sea from street rubbish washing into stormwater drains/rivers mostly in poor countries and from fishermen dropping their equipment overboard.

Microplastics are also not known to be toxic to people. So it's not like lead.

This attitude is completely naive. The idea we could dump all our garbage into the landfill with no loss is impossible. Better to never create it in the first place at the top of the funnel than try to deal with it at the bottom of the extremely leaky funnel.

Of course there will be some leakage, but if it's slower than the plastic is naturally removed from the environment, it won't get worse with time.

Nature is filled with toxic things like oil, asbestos, lead, mercury, uranium, etc. It's mostly safely stored in naturally occurring "landfills" which are harmless. Why can't we do the same?

It might not be better to never create it if that means crippling the world's economy and all the death and suffering that would go along with that by never using plastics. What price is worth paying? Or perhaps you see lack of technology as a good thing?

>It might not be better to never create it if that means crippling the world's economy and all the death and suffering that would go along with that by never using plastics. What price is worth paying? Or perhaps you see lack of technology as a good thing?

Technology spawning problems that need solutions that require more technology, which makes new problems, so on and so forth...

There's a way to advance, and there's a way to advance in the short term at the expense of the long term.

Plastic, and your general policy regarding it's application, and the handling of it's externality falls squarely in the mortgage the future to squander now bucket. Blow up the world and minimal footprint to the point the only thing that can put off catastrophe is "the next big breakthrough." This guarantees development is directed entirely by the excesses of those who have already passed, leaving those just coming in to clean up the mess.

Sustainable development by definition minimizes the long term impact of technological adoption, and incentivized development of systems that are closer to an ideal closed loop system. Doing this ensures that at anytime, a stable system exists from which to innovate and that your capacity to observe the ramifications of changes is generally significantly higher, since you have time, data, and an understanding of how effects propagate throughout the physical and ecological network. Minor tweaks are generally buffered by long cycle processes.

Point being: one way of doing things results in a constant crisis of the week.

The other way results in the foundational understanding that actually enables any crisis to be accurately dealt with, and that overall, the system is in a largely stable configuration.

I know which way I'd go for.

So what's your solution to this issue?

Slow refinement, and avoidance of development directions that produce excessive amounts of unutilizable waste to which the only solution is sequestration.

Avoid unsustainable practices such as excessive monoculture farming; constrain packaging to forms with applications for secondary reuse, or compostability.

Develop technologies that further "closing the loop" on current technologies. Petrophagic bacteria to break down plastics; high carbon sequestering, fast growing plant life.

Concentrate medical research on trying to confirm treatment protocols w.r.t. "traditional" plants/phages/etc.

Focus on nuclear power, and nuclear fuel reprocessing.

Keep things from going over the Rubicon environmentally, and you've suddenly bought everyone enough time to get their stuff together to equalize development levels the world over. Seems humanity's biggest problem other than not paying attention to environmental change is figuring out how in the heck to coexist with each other.

EDIT:

This is just the parts of the mental TODO list that are sitting on top of my head. I've got entire sections that are highly dependent on getting access to information I simply don't have the time/manpower to personally chase down for relevance.

Basic gist is to shore up our present level of development, change up the incentives/structural characteristics of the international market to attempt to decrease the need to move goods as much; shore up and propogate the technosphere so there's a more consistent level of technological development to avail ourselves to in being able to more accurately track, model, and calculate the effects of continuing development as they propagate through the biosphere in real time. This will also be necessarily bundled with significant increases in funding/incentives for research in the Life/biological/ecological Sciences, as well as further refinement of meteorological sciences.

We need to know as much about the state of our biosphere as a whole in the present to equip us to manage our continued development without sacrificing the larger part of the biosphere in doing so.

Parallel research efforts would also be undertaken in porting closed loop ecologies (with humans in the mix) into extreme environs to double down on being able to increase potential biological footprint.

Emergency backup biosphere tucked safely away for a rainy day are pretty cool too.

Anyway. Didn't actually expect anyone would actually ask. So used to people avoiding it.

Why can't we do both? This attitude that we can't ever do anything differently unless it's perfect is why we still ship stuff to China to be landfilled. At least if we keep the waste here we're taking ownership of the problem rather than sweeping it under the rug. Taking ownership is the first stop toward taking action.

> We need laws to standardize plastics so that only purely recyclable plastics exist and no more single-use plastics, or compostable containers. Anything else should be banned.

Do you have any idea how much this would change the world, if it were implemented?

Say goodbye to many if not most medical plastics - especially those use for artificial joints and similar implantable devices.

Say hello to much heavier engines in automobiles and other devices (until batteries get much, much better - which is on the horizon, and hopefully soon - the IC engine is here to stay for the foreseeable future). Oh - and those batteries also use a lot of plastic, and I am not sure you can make them with recyclable versions.

Say hello to increased fuel usage and shipping costs for all kinds of products because they couldn't be made of recyclable or compostable plastics, and had to be made of other materials.

Most "engineering plastics" - those plastics made for harsh environments and/or uses that have thermal cycling of the environment, or need high mechanical strength - generally tend to be made from single-use plastics; this is because when you recycle plastic - most plastics, actually - their chemical bonds are broken and reformed, in addition to the mixing of various binders and other substances that exist in various plastics - even recyclable - that are used to give the plastic various properties (ie - one manufacturer's PET may not match another manufacturer's in makeup) - this process all adds up to a plastic that, while recycled, has varying properties, generally is a weaker form of plastic, and is difficult to control those properties due to the variability of the recycled feedstock component. Even then, today, there are very few "100% recycled plastic" products; most have so-called "virgin" plastic mixed in to compensate for the variable content of the recycled materials, and to make up for the deficits caused by that. Those products that tend to be "100% recycled" are generally "low-end products" or used as filler material for other products.

Think of paper recycling: Where does the recycled paper get used in 100% recycled paper? Most likely low cost paper for low-end paper books, grey paper for wrapping or other uses, maybe certain paper bags, maybe insulation. Do you recall the low-grade lined paper in grade school, that was grey, and passed out for quick quizzes, or for spelling practice? That was all 100% recycled paper pulp. It tore easily, it tended to be thin, it looked terrible. But for the use it was perfect - but you wouldn't fill a binder or other notebook with it. The reason it had those unfavorable properties had to do with the variability of paper recycling; basically the same issue behind recycling plastic. And so we see similar results with recycled plastic.

Also - each time you recycle the plastic, the worse the end product gets; you can only abuse those molecules and such so much by the reformation process before it becomes completely useless...

So-called compostable plastics have their own issues; they are really just as long-lived as non-compostable plastics, unless they are exposed and worked in the right environment (a landfill is not the right environment). Sadly, this is rarely done. It probably has to do with the costs or other reasons to make such a composting system for such plastics; I've never heard exactly why, I just know that the plastic doesn't really decompose unless in just the right environmental conditions which are rarely met in the real world.

Do we need to do something different in regards to our plastics usage and recycling? Yes - but elimination and bans won't get us there. Switching to pure compostable or recyclable plastics isn't possible, unless you want to eliminate a ton of industries, products, and uses (especially medical).

Your argument is basically "it's too expensive". There will be more than enough incentive for someone to develop a cheap, recyclable but robust plastic that can be used for medical devices.

I'm completely okay with living in a world where there are less conveniences, but we're not poisoning ourselves to death as a planet. This is getting ridiculous. We need to make a stand somewhere and the time is now.

Having a ban will let companies get creative and build equally strong but recyclable plastics. Nothing is impossible, it's just expensive. And if we increase the costs on everything then it works to everyone's benefit.

> We need to make a stand somewhere and the time is now.

Why do you think it's now rather than some time in the past or future?

Obviously, some time in the past would have been better, but we've missed that already, so "now" is the best remaining option.

When we're currently on a course that is degrading the environment of the entire planet for all of us, the sooner we begin to alter that course, the better.

   Your argument is basically "it's too expensive". There will be more than 
    enough incentive for someone to develop a cheap, recyclable but robust 
    plastic that can be used for medical devices.

His argument is more that adding lots of laws will stifle industries and make it much harder for new, inventive products to be created, and that includes life-support systems and the like.

   Having a ban will let companies get creative and build equally strong but
    recyclable plastics. Nothing is impossible, it's just expensive. And if 
    we increase the costs on everything then it works to everyone's benefit.

A lot of the plastics that are used today are thermoplastics, because they're easier to build and manipulate- all you have to do is melt little chips and then squeeze them into a shape and you're more or less done. Things like HDPE- what a lot of plastic cutting boards and gallon milk jugs are made of- are really useful and strong in many use cases. Those other use cases are where things like thermoset plastics- think stuff like epoxy- come in handy. There are many applications where nothing else, including metal, will work well, for various reasons.

Having a ban will let companies get creative and build equally strong but recyclable plastics.- you missed one of cr0sh's points- even if everyone only builds slightly different plastics, it's still hard to get a good fully recycled product.

And if we increase the costs on everything then it works to everyone's benefit. I don't think that that's how this works. I'm pretty sure that if we increase the costs of everything, then the overall cost of living goes up and money gets devalued, the only real difference being that the taxing body has more of your money. I don't think that this is a good idea.

Banning some particularly egregious chemicals (such as CFC's, which absolutely destroy the ozone layer) is a good idea. Saying no to a ginormous subset of plastics is a particularly damaging idea.

I suspect organizations regulating "single use plastics" would competent enough to draw a distinction between single use plastic bags and single use bionic limbs and not require the medical grade plastics used in medical applications to be compostable...

> Say goodbye to many if not most medical plastics - especially those use for artificial joints and similar implantable devices.

Being in (home) dialysis, I generate a lot of waste. I get 30+ boxes of supplies every month. Loads on single use plastic fluid bags, wraps, cassettes, hoses, etc. All need to be single use sterile. Without these disposable materials, they used glass bottles in the past and people would get infections in a manner of weeks to months. I heard it can still happen but much rarer. And people have told me the pain from these infections are quite unbearable.

> We need to stop producing so much plastic. We need laws to standardize plastics so that only purely recyclable plastics exist and no more single-use plastics, or compostable containers. Anything else should be banned.

Not necessarily disagreeing, but the cost of pretty much everything would go up significantly, along with the incentive to circumvent the regulations.

> cost of pretty much everything would go up significantly

This just includes the short term costs.

You're kidding yourself if you don't think these significant short-term costs can become significant long-term costs.

The whole point of "these alternative solutions" is to compensate long term costs by increasing short term costs.

The cost in dollars would go up significantly. The cost in dollars plus inflicted externalities would remain constant-ish, implementation failures notwithstanding.

That cost in dollars could be enough to sink the middle class and everything under it.

Then the cost in externalities would do the same. That's the whole point of pricing in externalities: if the paper packaging becomes cheaper after you do it, that's because the plastic packaging actually is worse for the would-be dollar-saving population in the long run.

Doing the pricing accurately relies on a bunch of projections we don't have, of course, but we can certainly do better than calling it all zero.

The president of the Philippines recently threw a tantrum, threatening to declare war on Canada if they didn't take back their garbage.

I dug into it and found that the president is completely justified in being pissed off. A Canadian company shipped "recycling" which turned out to be undisputable trash. Diapers and such.

What pisses me off is that I cannot find the name of this company anywhere. So Canada is taking all the blame for some company that shipped them trash and labeled it recycling.

If the agreement was Canada as a country ensures their recyclable exporters will only export things that conform to some standard, then the burden would be on Canada, yes.

But, what kind of bizarre world do we live in where we ship our trash to overseas places to be 'recycled' ? It just doesn't make any sense. We are exporting our waste and pollution to developing nations, those people are probably facing much worse environmental conditions than those in the developed world. It's truly despicable.

Yeah that's a good point. It's unusual that the articles keep mentioning "a Canadian company" but never names it. Maybe the agreement was at a national level.

And yeah, it's absurd. I just moved somewhere in Ontario where every garbage bag I put at the curbside costs $2. It's absolutely amazing to stand out on garbage day and see just how little people have set out. The system works.

The recycling is still "free" but I would love to see the same happen.

It really is amazing how much you can adapt.

I live in a building in Toronto and we don't get charged (directly) for trash. But the building has an organics path on the garbage shoots.

My partner and I started making the effort since then to separate our organics and recycling, etc.

I think we've maybe put a bag or two of actual "garbage" out in the past year or more.

Most things can be recycled—that we use at home anyway. I'm glad we have the compost shoot. That's the thing we put out the most.

Some things that seem like major uphill battles are really just a little mindfulness and a modicum of effort—and they become mindless routine after a short while.

Sorry for the pedantic aside, but I think 'chute' is the correct term/spelling. Shooting garbage does sound like fun though :)

If we define "shooting" as rapid acceleration thru a tube, that is a thing: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/nyregion/garbage-collecti...

Haha you're right! Well it's stuck now—past my edit window!

I wish more takeout places stopped using styrofoam in favor of greener alternatives. At least A&W has most of their packaging to be compostable or recyclable. I think the only thing that goes in the garbage is the damned softdrink lid.

Agreed. The cafeteria at my workplace finally moved over to all-paper takeout containers.

Even those damned lids—I wish they could move over to something at least cellulose-based. The lid doesn't have to last long after usage—but I wonder if that affects shelf-life... or whether it's just a matter of costs.

> And yeah, it's absurd. I just moved somewhere in Ontario where every garbage bag I put at the curbside costs $2. It's absolutely amazing to stand out on garbage day and see just how little people have set out. The system works.

And I'll continue to advocate that nobody except perhaps the 1% should have children in developed countries. A baby won't poop any less because trash costs $2 a bag. From what I understand diapers by nature don't break down for a long time.

Except there are re-usable diapers.

Tried those. They work, but require some work. The diapers must be washed, depending on the diaper type you might have to separate the fillings and the diaper before washing and put together again afterwards. You also need to insert a rice paper for the poop ...

It works, but it’s more work with them than with disposable diapers. We tried reusable for our two first, but the last one we have only used disposable diapers.

Unfortunately, most kindergarten do not accept those as it is way more work, as well as time-consuming for them.

There are cloth diapers, but they leak more than disposable diapers and cleaning them is less than pleasant.

I have seen diaper services where you put out a bag full of dirty diapers every few days and they drop off fresh ones to replace them. My wife and I looked at them, but in the end they cost roughly twice what we would be spending on disposable diapers. Maybe our calculus would be different if trash pickup was more expensive.

> There are cloth diapers, but they leak more than disposable diapers and cleaning them is less than pleasant.

> I have seen diaper services where you put out a bag full of dirty diapers every few days and they drop off fresh ones to replace them. My wife and I looked at them, but in the end they cost roughly twice what we would be spending on disposable diapers. Maybe our calculus would be different if trash pickup was more expensive.

I agree with you. I didn't say anything to the contrary. Perhaps it is for the best if people like me do not have any children. This is perhaps the most humane way of population control and therefore environment protection.

The point is diapers are already expensive for many people. We could continue to externalize the cost of disposing them like we do now or we can force people who have children to bear the cost. There are no right or wrong answers, just choices.

Previously, on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16761349

Similar question comes up when we discuss transit. Maybe I am in a bubble in this city but people seem to agree that public transit is something New York City (and surrounding areas) must push forward. Who pays for it though[1]?

[1] New Yorkers are famous for complaining about the city's subway: despite an ever-increasing rise in fares, service never seems to get any better. And even still, ticket-sales still only funds part of the New York City subway system; the city still relies on supplementary taxes and government grants to keep trains running, as fares only cover about 45 percent of the day-to-day operating costs. Capital costs (system expansions, upgrades, and repairs) are an entirely different question, and require more state and federal grants as well as capital market bonds. And New York’s system is not unique: as in other cities, New York struggles to pay existing expenses and must go into debt to pay for upgrades, that is, without raising prices.

from https://outline.com/UCsyRd

There's also biodegradable diapers. And cloth diapers.

The system probably works in cities and in particular areas that are relatively well-off. In other areas, I think it would encourage dumping. And what if you don't pay the trash bill? Do they cease picking it up?

What if trash pickup was $20 a bag, what kind of behavior would that encourage? For some people $2 a bag is probably a similar impact to their budget as $20 a bag is to others.

If anything, people should be paid for their garbage to be disposed of properly. Of course, this creates perverse incentives to put things in the garbage that don't belong there (such as going out of your way to throw out sticks, stones, what have you), but would most likely lead to the least amount of garbage being disposed of improperly. I imagine this could work on a deposit-basis similar to cans and bottles, but needs a more nuanced mechanism.

> What if trash pickup was $20 a bag, what kind of behavior would that encourage?

https://mauitime.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/19.30.EhBrah...

Remember, the free(illegal) solution makes the land worse off for all of us.

In fact, I'd use this very idea as a reason this should be under general taxation and not taxed per bag. The game theory 'defect' solution is to dump.

> What if trash pickup was $20 a bag

Does the term "illegal dumping" sound ominous to you? If you could somehow offset that charge by having a reasonable amount of well sorted and usable recycling then there's a chance it could work, but it's hard to see this not backfiring on the population at large.

Any solution that has to fight against the "people are lazy assholes" truth is going to be difficult to implement, sometimes requiring an entire cultural shift to achieve.

For what it is wroth, I have seen this work to an extent on the small scale. When I was young the county sold our trash service off to a private company. This private company required you to use the bags they provided to pick up the trash. They made these bags a hassle to acquire by only offering them at their office, which was way out in the middle of nowhere and only open one day a week for 4 hours. They were also fairly expensive. We managed, as an American family of 5, to only put out a single bag of trash a week, and this was in an area that didn't have recycling except for a "you bring it" aluminum can place. We did have a compost heap though, which isn't legal in some areas. My parents were very conscious of how much packaging was on anything before they bought it.

> We managed, as an American family of 5, to only put out a single bag of trash a week, and this was in an area that didn't have recycling except for a "you bring it" aluminum can place.

Unfortunately, the likelihood is that others in your area illegally dumped their trash, burned it, or are piling it up somewhere.

Taking the trash out of my apartment involves walking about 400 ft across the lot. That very tiny disincentive was enough to get me to probably halve my trash production, just by considering packaging during purchases.

> But, what kind of bizarre world do we live in where we ship our trash to overseas places to be 'recycled' ?

This story is not that, but normally they buy the recycling, process it, then resell it as usable plastic.

We aren't paying to ship it to them - they pay to ship it because they buy it.

Would probably be better for the environment to burn the plastic and use the heat energy.

In my city general waste is burned and the heat is used to heat office buildings and such. Paper, glass, metal and plastic is recycled, but not really sure if it is recycled locally or shipped somewhere to be dumped ...

"what kind of bizarre world do we live in where we ship our trash to overseas places to be 'recycled' ? It just doesn't make any sense"

It actually makes a lot of sense.

If recycling is somehow labour intense (it might be), and if the value of recycled plastic is worth more in one place to another, then at this point is just basic arbitrage.

As far as 'long term storage of garbage' that's one thing - but there are enough basic economic components to recycling that it should be thought of as a product, just like any other. Every product has weird externalities, not just recycling.

It was a Vancouver based company called Chronic Inc. that has since gone out of business. Hopefully the government can still recoup costs from the owners for their negligence. The waste is now being brought back to Vancouver, to be incinerated in a waste-to-energy plant.

Whoever is responsible for this should face criminal charges, this totally unacceptable and make us Canadian looks bad for their incompetence and greed, even though they ultimately went bankrupt.

CBC mentions "Chronic Inc., a former plastics exporter based in Ontario" https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/philippines-duterte-orders-...

The owner of Chronic Inc. etc. deny they sent garbage. [1]

[1] https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/02/13/whitby_plastic_r...

canada is responsible for regulating its companies so it's fair

Malaysia's real estate is too valuable for them to be storing plastic trash on it. The entire place is being aggressively deforested to make room for more palm plantations and that's way more important than whatever they get for taking in garbage.

China stopped accepting trash last year.

I thought that was recycling?

Maybe we should require them to take the trash back. After all, they are manufacturing it.

What right do we have to require them to do anything ? They're not manufacturing it because they want to, they're doing it because developed nations buy it. They closed the pipes because their internal production has reached their own recycling capacity. It's time we do the same.

The US doesn't really have much of a recycling problem domestically, though. We handle it fine. Lots of times that just means landfilling it, but that's actually not that terrible a solution.

The upside of throwing it back at the manufacturer is that they would be forced to consider the costs of disposal as part of their bidding for new contracts. Turns it into a market problem.

But ... the vibe I get from a lot of folks in this thread is that it's more about pinning all the blame on the wealthiest nations and assuming that the poorer nations aren't able to resist being exploited. I don't agree with that.

I'm all for having the producer pay for the type of packaging he's using: plastic or polluting package should be taxed much more than, sya, cardboard. But I'm of the opinion that the one who's responsible is the one who is buying stuff in the first place. If there's no demand there's no production, and no pollution.

Cardboard costs trees.

Trees are a renewable resource, if you have enough space.

Wait, don't producers already pay for the type of packaging they use?

Everything costs something, but I think we can both agree that cardboard is more environmental-friendly than plastic.

I was talking about a specific tax on pollution, like a carbon tax: the more your choices as a producer impact the environment, the more you should pay.

What right? Well, it's not a right but a condition to sell that they must take back non recyclable/biodegradable waste that came from what they produced.

That said, I'm not advocating the country takes it but the companies. In fact, China probably will adopt this sell condition policy domestically but not apply it to overseas selling.

And soon they will join Indonesia in being one of the largest carbon producers in the world.

Palm oil produces 4x more per hectare than nearly all other types of vegetable oil.

There's no easy fix here, the developed world is basically saying don't cut down your forests not long after we did so ourselves to make way for agriculture. Not to mention lecturing a bunch of poor people to pay more for a cooking staple.

Malaysians get quite defensive about their palm crops.

It's also starting to look like palmitic acid has about the same cardiovascular health effects as trans fatty acids. So, yeah, in the long run, might as well leave the forests, because there's a good chance that the current fad for palm oil isn't going to last all that long.

That said, 100% agreed that it's ridiculous that developed nations are tut-tutting developing nations for economically exploiting their own resources, not only in a way that mirrors what developed nations have already done, but also in response to economic demand that largely originates from those same developed nations.

There is a growing movement in Malaysia to use healthier oils instead of palm oil.

I have been to several restaurants in KL recently that are openly advertising that they use no palm oil.

When traveling in Malaysia it is impossible to ignore the environmental impact of these plantations and the local population are becoming more aware every day.

This is really bad. Many are just dumping them into the ocean.

As long as it is cheaper to export waste, we are not going to build a better recycling system or even better stop producing so much plastic.

East Asian countries should stop taking plastic waste.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. I am happy that Malaysia is taking a stand and is refusing to be a dumping ground for trash. I am sad that all of this plastic is coming back to the US where I am honestly unsure on what they will do with it. I am mad that it has gotten this far and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

They’ll just incinerate it, which is probably what they should have done in the first place. Companies in third world countries bidding unrealistically low for recycling contracts has made recycling seem more viable than it actually is.

And it’s cheaper to dump it in the ocean than to dispose of it safely.

Cheaper to ship it to Malaysia and have them dump it in the ocean than convince a bunch of 1st world NIMBYs that a modern incinerator plant won't give their children a .000001% increased chance of cancer.

Landfill is better then incinerating. Burning it releases toxic chemicals and is effectively dumping it in the air (vs dumping it in the ocean). Landfill (dumping in the ground) is the least worst of all the options. From what you may believe there is plenty of land available.

Incineration works well when modern technology is brought to bear. It also doesn't create later water/land pollution problems. In any cases, one solution might work better than the other depending on the context.

Burning, recycling or burial all could be OK if they were done right. But doing them right involves more costs than doing them wrong. The US and other countries hire companies and pay them to do the disposal. Sure, the companies get paid for the estimated cost of doing the disposal right but companies make all their extra profit from doing the disposal wrong. The entire approach of subcontracting is misguided but given vast vested interests behind the subcontracting approach, given you know this stuff is going to be done wrong, which wrong to do you do want? Pollution of the air, the earth or the water?

> Companies in third world countries bidding unrealistically low for recycling contracts

This is a false impression, they are not bidding to be paid for recycling, rather they pay for the recycling, because they purchase it.

The trouble is when it's mixed with garbage, they remove the good stuff, and the rest? Well, who knows.

There is this storyline that first world companies are dumping their trash on other countries. That's not the truth.

The story in the article is someone bought recycling, and was shipped trash. They don't care about the trash, they are upset they didn't get what they purchased.

Nowhere in the article did it say Malaysia paid for this recycling. In fact, often times recycling is costs more than its worth, and municipal systems pay recyclers rather than the other way around.

The only recycling that someone might make more than the effort put in would be e-waste.

This article did not mention it, but that is in fact how it works: Other countries pay for the recycling.

> and municipal systems pay recyclers rather than the other way around.

Yup, because the value of the recycling is not quite enough, but the recyclers then sell the recycling. That's why there is a whole list of what they won't accept.

It's not because they can't reprocess it, it's because there is no one to sell it to.

If this is news to you, well, now you've learned something new.

Incineration solves the problem of storing recycling but is worse in every other way.

> It also doesn't create later water/land pollution problems.

Where do you think all that carbon goes?

Consumers could always use less plastic. I don't see how anyone could think Malaysia is obliged to fix this mess for the West, they already take in large amounts for processing.

I've never been asked how I want the product I buy packaged, or what material its shell should be made of. I'm also never asked whether I'd prefer the product without a design flaw that makes it trash in a year or two (if not immediately). Doesn't help that the shops' shelves are full of equally bad trash products. Race to the bottom, baby.

It's interesting which topics certain communities are ready to outrage over and completely forget about quantifying... I say this because I've been under the impression recently that:

* The USA actually properly landfills the vast majority of its waste these days

* Most of the plastics entering the ocean come from improperly disposed waste, and from countries outside the US

* The illegal waste shipping to asian countries is mostly from a small pool of shady, bad actors

Any waste coming back to the US can be more properly disposed of; we have the infrastructure in place it's just apparently more expensive than scamming Malaysia. I would like to see some actual data before getting all outraged at entire countries and depressed that the USA is shipping all its plastics overseas(it isn't).

Movies from 80/90 made the view of NY trash barge kind of iconic, when did cities like NY stop just dumping their trach into the ocean? Google came up with 1992 NYTimes article declaring the end.

At least if richer nations take their trash back home, there is a lower chance it will end up thrown in a river or dumped in a forest without serious government and/or watchdog intervention.

It's also naïvely irresponsible of richer nations to export trash and recycling to multiple countries in the bottom 55% of the Corruption Index (that are also known to mismanage waste) and then act all surprised when facts emerge that waste is not being processed properly. Like, no shit an awful CEO or crime boss in a corrupt country is going to care only about the money ($, €, £) and not about where the waste is dumped. And the local authorities look the other way while they are paid off.

the US actually has more space for landfill than malaysia

Good. Dumping American trash in Malaysia isn't any better than emptying your kitchen trash can on your bedroom floor.

They don’t dump it there. People from Malaysia are buying it.

They weren't buying used diapers, they were buying recyclable plastic.

You wanted a new TV in your living room? Let me throw some puke and used diapers instead.

You seem to be implying there's some kind of cheating happening in what is ultimately a business deal. I wouldn't buy a new TV with puke and diapers unless it was my business reselling the TV and disposing of the rest.

It sounds like there was cheating here- there's an acceptable failure rate- such as a chunk of wood, maybe a brick, etc., but to me it sounds a lot more like this somehow-unnamed Canadian company sent them something like 10% recyclable stuff and 90% trash instead of the 90% recyclables and 10% trash they (some entity in Malaysia) was expecting. It also seems like this either happened more than once, or happened once with an entire Panamax-class ship's haul.

>You seem to be implying there's some kind of cheating happening in what is ultimately a business deal.

In the article, it was revealed that the contracts were for recyclable materials not worthless toxic garbage, and Malaysia was actually being scammed. (That's why their president made such a big deal about it).

malaysian recyclers, as far as i know, were fairly profitable despite paying a much lower rate compared to chinese recyclers. there are companies out there squeezing a fortune out of rubbish. the visual impact on the landscape is notable, although not much more can be said about the sime-darby fields of palm trees and container housing that dominate the rest of the rural countryside.

while i feel bad for them, the reality of business in malaysia is that you are at the mercy of politicians and their policies. these change like the squalls at sea.

IMO, this is effectively the same thing as buying conflict diamonds or conflict oil. Too much of our economy relies on serf or outright slave labor by doing business with despotic governments.

Note: I'm not making comments about Malaysia specifically, I don't know anything about the place, and parent's comments might not apply to them, IDK.

Yesterday I was opening up yet another Amazon white bubble wrap envelope when I took a closer look at the recycling logo.

“Please remove paper label before recycling.”

Mind somewhat blown. How often do you think that actually happens? But also, really shows you how hard this stuff is to process. Of course peeling off the label is nearly impossible.

I wish after tearing the perforation off, there was another flap in there waiting to be deployed to cleanly reuse the envelope (versus the tape monster which you end up with if you try to reuse it by folding it over on itself).

And then another row of perforation. And another flap. All the way from 8.5x11 or so, down to 8.5x5.

Some of the clothes mailers I get are designed like this, with an inner flap and adhesive strip designed for sending back what didn’t fit.

Would that be worth it in the end at scale? I for one would definitely save the bubble envelopes if they were cleaner to reuse.

But then that label would also have to peel off easier too (different type of adhesive).

According to https://youtu.be/SnB6iRDoJ90 (7:45 onwards) even before China started refusing recyclable waste only 9% of what went into blue bins in the USA was actually being recycled, the other 91% was being incinerated or landfilled. what the stats are now I don't know but they're almost certainly worse not better.

Not the country's fault but Chinese companies definitely should take back the waste. They produced it in the first place. If not, they should not be allowed to sell.

My first thought is to wonder how this issue is related to this recent finding:

10 Rivers Contribute Most of the Plastic in the Oceans

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...

Do we have a solution for taking care of such waste in a clean way? I saw a company that claims to convert it to fuel.

Not that I know of. But there's a simple policy solution. Producers must take back waste as a condition to sell.

If they're brand new companies, then simply ask for a bond until they've been around a while.

All this is risk free but single use waste cost is priced in for consumers.

Countries that don't adopt this policy will have higher taxes to deal environment costs which is worse than prevention. Companies affected by this can bypass conditions by only using list of approved materials; recycable, biodegradable, etc.

Can the Scandinavia trash>energy plants handle “contaminants”?

They claim there’s no pollution from our local plant at least, but we don’t burn plastic.

If by dumped, you mean sold, sure. They will also have to sell it on if they don't want it.

They are illegal imports. The country, standing for the people, does not want buyers/sellers to have trash be imported through cargo containers. Drugs "imported" don't have be sold on if Malaysia doesn't want them, either.

The people who agreed to buy it did so illegally. It's just that now, Malaysia is implementing a more robust and wholistic police action to enforce their mandates in that regard.

Sucks for us, but entirely within the rights of the government of Malaysia. If we have a problem with the scammers who took our money, then we're free to take that up in court with the scammers. But that has nothing to do with the government of Malaysia.

I actually don’t think it sucks for us. We’re better equipped to recycle or properly dispose of the waste. It will definitely cost more but I think it’s something that most people are willing to accept.

Even now I’m hesitant to put things like plastic bags and straws into the recycling rather than trash. Only by placing it in the trash can I be more sure it doesn’t end up floating near some reef.

They were sold a mislabeled item. They're just returning it to the store.

Actually the law recently changed and trash importation is now illegal in Malaysia.

Some politicians are even going as far as calling the owners of these companies who are ignoring the law traitors.

I don't know if this law applies retroactively. But anyway, its a good step.

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