Yes, you’re probably as surprised as I am to learn that US throw-aways have been our biggest export to China for several years (by value), bested only in 2012 by record soybean sales.
That year, we sent over 46 million metric tons of scrap metal, paper, rubber and plastic to China.
Historically, these materials stayed in the US to be recycled, landfilled or burned, but because of China’s much lower labor costs and lax environmental regulations, that’s no longer the case.
In the book, Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter writes about the globalization of the scrap market. The industry "turns over aas much as $500 billion annually" and "employs more people than any other industry except agriculture." Wow.
Here’s an excerpt from Elizabeth Royte’s review of the book, which appears in OnEarth, a magazine produced by the Natural Resources Defense Council. We offer it to you not because of the book, but to give you some insight into how this massive industry works.
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In China’s Hebei Province, for example, formerly bucolic farmland is now filled with 20,000 mom and pop shops that wash, sort and melt plastics from car bumpers, baskets and crates. The money they make pays to send children to school, to pave roads and construct buildings.
But the area is choked with traffic, polymer fumes and grime, and its young workers succumb to pulmonary fibrosis and paralyzing strokes.
But Minter points to the importance of recycling: in 2012, it kept 135 million metric tons of materials out of landfills and it prevents the mining or extraction of natural resources (oil and gas in the case of plastics). To get one ton of virgin copper requires processing 100 tons of ore, an energy-intensive process that rips up vast landscapes, contaminates waterways, and leaves sulfuric acid in its wake.
As Minter says, why would anyone mine this metal when "there’s an endless supply of perfectly recyclable and reusable copper – worth billions – in the junkyards and recycling bins of America?"
As he traipses through trash heaps in India, the Middle East, Africa, Brazil, Taiwan and beyond, he describes piles in scrapyards, warehouses and in front of shacks. He’s as awestruck watching a million-dollar machine in Indiana pulverize cars into streams of metals, plastics and glass, as observing thousands of low-wage workers in Asia unwind copper wires from electric motors and hack aluminum from discarded water meters.
That’s not to say we don’t have a recycling industry in the US, because we do, but clearly it could be much bigger and handle more of our materials.
It could start with a national recycling plan – we still only recycle 34.1% of waste nationwide.
Achieving a national recycling rate of 75% would create 2.3 million jobs (by 2030), reduce pollution and improve public health, and generate strong local economies with a stable employment base.
Read our article, E-Waste Championship Moves to Developing World.
Read the full story, Our Most Surprising Export:
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