All of the statements in this article are based on reliable sources and are reproduced at the end of this article
As the world's largest importer of "foreign garbage", China imports tens of millions of tons of waste plastics and scrap metals from Western countries every year, but these wastes will cause great harm to the human body and the environment in the process of transportation and processing.
In order to build a beautiful China and ensure the health of the people, in 2017, the mainland government introduced a series of measures to reduce the import of "foreign garbage".
In the face of China's policy, many developed countries have begun to complain, because it means that they can only watch their country become a "big garbage dump", after all, there is no country in the world with such a huge garbage disposal capacity except China.
Import of foreign garbage
In the 80s of the last century, the mainland needed a lot of raw materials and energy to develop the economy, but because the mainland's industrial system at that time was not perfect, so many materials needed to be imported from abroad, but this also meant that it needed to spend huge debts.
In order to save money, the mainland thought of "waste utilization", after all, the cost was much lower than that of new materials, and it happened that the developed countries at that time also had a headache for their own "waste waste" disposal, so the two sides hit it off and reached this cooperation.
After all, developed countries were also very strict about garbage disposal at that time, and if you want to dispose of these garbage, not only need to invest a lot of money, but also face huge regulations and fines if you don't handle it properly.
For the waste paper, waste plastics, scrap metal and other items discarded in developed countries, they are a complete treasure in our eyes, after our selection and processing, they can be made into new products, and we can also study new manufacturing technologies from them.
In the face of this "win-win" state, both sides are active and a lot of cooperation, in an instant, the mainland has become the "foreign garbage" receiving warehouse behind the developed countries in the West, and many manufacturing industries have a great demand for low-cost raw materials, which is also directly imported garbage has become a "sweet pastry".
The capital of e-waste
With the entry of "foreign garbage" into the mainland, Guangdong, Zhejiang and other regions have quickly become major importing provinces of solid waste, especially in Guiyu Town, Chaoyang District, Shantou City, Guangdong Province, which is known as the "capital of electronic waste".
In Guiyu Town, there are more than 300 enterprises in 21 villages, more than 5,500 business households, and more than 60,000 people are engaged in the dismantling and processing of waste electronic and electrical appliances and plastics on a large scale, and the annual dismantling and processing of waste electronic and electrical appliances is as high as 1.55 million tons.
Moreover, they will also produce up to 600,000 tons of various hardware materials every year, which is equivalent to mining 2 million tons of ore, and in the face of such excellent business opportunities, it has directly attracted about 200,000 poor migrant workers for employment.
When you enter Guiyu Town, you can see that almost tens of thousands of people are engaged in the recycling and decomposition of waste electrical appliances and plastics, they use sulfuric acid to wash circuit boards, and incinerate the garbage that can no longer be recycled, but because the process they use is too simple, it also leads to the pollution of the environment in Guiyu Town.
After all, these electronic components contain a lot of metal substances, such as copper, iron, aluminum, tin, etc., so in the process of extraction, they need to be incinerated with knives, buried and other methods, of course, in the process of processing, it will also cause the outflow of lead, cadmium, mercury and other harmful substances.
If the human body once inhaled, it will directly destroy its own immune system, and long-term inhalation will pose a threat to the life and health of the human body, plus these harmful gases spread with the air, resulting in the entire sky over Guiyu Town is filled with this thick black smoke and odor.
With the spread of "poisonous gas", a large number of organisms in the water have died, and the ecological environment has been directly damaged.
According to the survey, the blood lead content of children in Guiyu Town often exceeds the normal level, and the intelligence of newborns is generally low, and even the cancer rate of adults is increasing rapidly.
While it is true that the residents of Guiyu Town are earning a lot of income in this way, their health is declining, and the environment in some parts of China is very poor, but the environment is getting better in other countries that import garbage into China.
Moreover, there are some lawless maniacs who often smuggle and smuggle "foreign garbage", and even more so that they can make their own fortune, completely ignoring the health of other people and the ecological environment of the mainland.
China bans "foreign garbage"
In order to better protect people's health and the safety of the ecological environment, the mainland directly banned the entry of "foreign garbage" on July 18, 2017, and when this regulation was implemented, many relevant departments such as environmental protection and customs on the mainland only took practical actions.
In 2018 alone, the mainland verified 254,000 tons of various wastes, and at the same time, the import volume of solid waste also dropped by 57%, and the import volume of restricted solid waste directly decreased by 64%.
Because with the improvement of the mainland's productivity level, the mainland no longer sacrifices the environment in exchange for economic growth, and it has put the construction of ecological civilization in a more important position, and the mainland has been working hard for the construction of ecological civilization.
Of course, many developed countries have expressed their dissatisfaction with such behavior, especially the Western European and American countries, and they have used the power of the media to complain about the various "harms" caused to them by China's practices, and even want China to repeal the ban.
After all, for the world, it is difficult for other countries to have a huge garbage disposal capacity like China, and this also leads to the fact that their garbage is about to face a state of not being able to be delivered, and even more so for a long time, they will face the situation of being "besieged by garbage".
Moreover, Bloomberg, a major American media, also used such a headline in its report: "China has thrown a big problem of 111 million tons of garbage to the world", in fact, anyone with a discerning eye can see that they are deliberately blaming China.
However, we are afraid that this kind of behavior has long been "not strange", after all, according to the American style of doing things, this is also something that we people can expect, but unlike in the past, some media in the United States have begun to call for everyone to reduce the use of disposable products such as plastic bags, after all, this can reduce environmental pollution.
After all, over the years, China has indeed disposed of a large amount of waste plastic waste around the world, so when China no longer helps them deal with it, they will rely on China for all their complaints when they are faced with nowhere to dispose of the garbage.
And according to Eurostat data, in 2021, the EU exported up to 33 million tons of waste to non-EU countries, and waste electronic products from Western Europe and the United States and other countries are often sent to Ghana, which also leads to serious pollution in some parts of Ghana.
However, for the recycling of waste materials, the OECD also made a special statistics, from 2000 to 2019, the global plastic waste has more than doubled, and only 9% of waste has been successfully recycled.
Turkey has become a place of "foreign garbage".
After China banned the import of foreign garbage, Turkey has become the "world's trash can", according to the British newspaper The Guardian, Turkey has been receiving large amounts of garbage from the European Union and the United Kingdom in recent years.
In 2021, the EU's plastic waste exports to Turkey increased from 39,000 tons in 2017 to 450,000 tons, including supermarket packaging plastic bags and daily necessities.
And according to Greenpeace investigators, piles of garbage have been found in more than 10 places around Adana province in southern Turkey, and these garbage are randomly thrown on the roadside and in the fields, which also directly affects the environment around Adana province.
In recent years, many Southeast Asian countries have become the "hardest hit areas" of developed countries' waste exports, and according to Southeast Asian statistics in 2018, the import volume of waste plastics in ASEAN countries has risen from 830,000 tons to 2.26 million tons.
According to US media reports, in 2020, the United States and Kenya began to negotiate a trade deal, that is, the United States invested in Kenya's garbage recycling industry, in fact, anyone with a discerning eye can see that the United States wants to export plastic waste to Kenya.
Even a 2023 report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) shows that the annual production of plastic in the world has exceeded 430 million tons, and two-thirds of these plastic products are short-term use and will soon become waste.
This means that many countries will dispose of these plastic products in landfills or incineration, and at the "Ocean Conference", United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speculated that by 2050, the total weight of plastic waste in the ocean is likely to exceed that of fish.
Information sources:
The original article was published on Huanqiu.com on April 11, 2023 reports on refusing to be a "garbage dumping site" and continuously strengthening the management of "foreign garbage" in many countries
The original article was published on People's Daily Online on January 18, 2021 A report on China's rejection of "foreign garbage" (expert interpretation).
This article was originally published in Upstream News on May 17, 2021 on the report of international environmental organizations: Turkey has become the largest plastic dump in European countries