China, wielding its new “Green Sword,” cut ties with its former reputation as the world’s dumping ground in 2018. Green Sword refers to the “National Sword” policy, which was enacted in response to the developed world’s transgressions related to China’s trash imports. Citing “large amounts of dirty waste or even hazardous waste” mixed in with the imported “recyclable waste,” Beijing faced pressure domestically to protect its environmental interests and people’s health. [1] The policy spells out regulations for the quality of imported trash and bans 24 kinds of wastes, including nonindustrial plastic, from being imported. Prior to this, China was the world’s largest importer of non-hazardous waste, so their withdrawal is causing devastating impacts on the global trash trade. Presently, developed countries are overwhelmed by their own trash as their local governments and waste processors struggle to find a place for it all. On the bright side however, evidence has shown that the pressure being placed on trash authorities has yielded a “green” silver lining as countries and companies across the world look toward recycling programs, eco-friendly products, and cutting-edge green technologies to save the world from its trash.
Before National Sword
The National Sword policy was preceded by Beijing’s increasingly rigid waste import policies that had been evolving since at least 2010. For example, the 2013 policy “Operation Green Fence” cracked down on illegal foreign smuggling and trading by ramping up its waste inspection capacity and border policing, foreshadowing the current restrictions. [2] During the ten-month operation, all categories of waste imports were inspected to ensure that incoming imports met the quality standards already established by the law. The operation led to a 17% or 2.35 megaton reduction of trash imports from developed countries. [3] This is especially concerning considering that this means that developed countries have been flouting their obligations spelled out in the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. In particular, Article 4 and Article 9 of the Basel Convention oblige signatories to respect the waste trade policies of other countries. [4]
Mounting health and environmental concerns also triggered Beijing to wield its green sword. As the country industrialized and became more capital-dependent, the world has increasingly looked to China to import their rubbish. The magnitude of these imports reveals the extent of this dependence: nearly half of the world’s nonindustrial plastic imports were sent to China in the past 25 years [5], 22% of the world’s non-hazardous waste was imported into China in 2014 [6] and 90% and 75% of collected plastics entered China from the European Union and the U.S. respectively [7]. However, the capital-hungry, industrializing China of the 1990s has changed, and now Beijing is facing the pressures of a burgeoning middle class who are (literally) sick of the pollution caused by imported wastes. Their environmental concerns have taken a nationalistic turn and they no longer want to be the dumping grounds for foreign developed countries.
An increased number of environmental protests and cognizance of environmental issues have put pressure on the PRC to focus on green policies. The wide publicity of the documentaries Plastic China (2016) and Under the Dome (2015) left citizens appalled at the informal recycling industry and air pollution afflicting their nation. Experts have pointed to the fallout of the release and then censoring of these films as the “turning point” for the shift in policy regarding waste. [8] Nonetheless, environmental awareness cannot solely be blamed for the change in policy as economic factors have also pushed Beijing to adopt National Sword. In 2009, environmental pollution cost the government 1,392 billion yuan or 3.8% of the country’s GDP that year, while their growth rate was at 8.7%. [9] As the country’s growth slows and wages rise, the cost of taking in these imports will eventually outweigh the profit. Another economic factor is the costs associated with contaminated waste. Processing it is expensive because processors then must pay to sort out and dispose of the unwanted trash in order to recover the salvageable material. [10] The collective economic, environmental, and social pressures have pushed the PRC to equip the National Sword and fend off trash from the West.
The Global Recycling Crisis
China’s plastic imports plummeted by 99 percent [11] and they are no longer accepting 55 percent of the world’s scrap paper following National Sword’s implementation. [12] This has shocked the global waste trade economy as recyclers in the United States and other developed countries do not know what to do because, prior to the ban, their “business [was] to bring it in, process it and move it out as quickly as [they] can.” [13] As a result, processing facilities have become inundated with trash with nowhere to send them. As overwhelming stockpiles of solid waste have become rife across the developed world, their facilities are struggling to handle this unprecedented situation. Several curbside recycling programs have been cancelled; harder-to-recycle materials have been dropped from some facilities’ programs; some facilities have been outright rejecting all wastes, and some smaller facilities have gone out of business. Consequently, more recyclable materials are ending up in landfills or burning in pollution-emitting incinerators or worse, littering the environment. [14]
The “Green” Silver Lining
Despite the grim aforementioned prospects for global waste, optimists see this crisis as a catalyst for positive change. Since China is now only willing to accept trash with contamination-levels below a certain threshold, exporters using advanced sensor-based sorting technology now have the competitive advantage and are more capable of attracting higher revenues from customers who value cleaner products which effectively incentivizes countries to upgrade their domestic facilities. Furthermore, governments, recycling industries, and other companies have an incentive to produce less rubbish, deemphasize single-stream recycling, create eco-friendly products, and upgrade their capacities. Examples including: the New South Wales’ government responding by investing 47 million dollars to their Waste Less, Recycle More initiative [15]; U.S. materials recovery facilities expanding operations, upgrading equipment, and adding workers; and Starbucks, American Airlines, and other business restricting plastic shopping bags, cutlery, straws, and drink-stirrers. In addition, the European Parliament recently approved a ban on single-use plastics, the United Kingdom has released a plan to tax manufacturers of plastic packaging with less than 30 percent recycled materials, and Norway has adopted a new system in which single-use plastic bottle-makers pay an “environmental levy” that declines as the return rate for their products rises. [16]
The actions taken by Southeast Asian countries in order to protect themselves from the National Sword’s spillover effects reveal another “green” silver lining to our global waste crisis. With China no longer accepting most waste, Europe and North America redirected their trash en masse to other countries in the region, evidenced by Thailand’s plastic waste imports increasing by 640% and Malaysia’s increasing 273% in the first six months of 2018. [17] Yet, the countries in the region did not just accept the redirected trash willy-nilly. Some have temporarily or permanently prohibited imports of plastic waste, some suspended the issuing of plastic recycling import licenses, some revoked permits for plastic waste imports, and most have updated their regulations. [18] A few countries in the region have even begun sending unwanted trash back to its source, citing the Duty to Reimport outlined in Article 9 of the Basel Convention. [19] After receiving 100 containers of household trash, mislabeled as recyclable materials, Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte notoriously stated in 2019 “I will not allow that kind of s***…your garbage is on the way. Prepare a grand reception. Eat it if you want to…your garbage is coming home.” [20] The shockwaves triggered by National Sword may well have caused a wave of eco-nationalism in Southeast Asia, and considering the nascent technological, environmental, and social innovations brought about by the global recycling crisis, this situation can have the potential to yield positive change for the health of our planet and the people living on it.
[1] World Trade Organization Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade. G/TBT/N/CHN/1211. Notification by Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China. Report no. 17-3880. July 18, 2017.
[2] Brooks, Amy L., Shunli Wang, and Jenna R. Jambeck. “The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade.” Environmental Studies of Science Advances 4:6 (June 20, 2018).
[3] Balkevicius, Adomas, Mark Sanctuary, and Sigita Zvirblyte. “Fending off Waste from the West: The impact of China’s Operation Green Fence on the international waste trade.” World Economy, 2020.
[4] Secretary-General of the United Nations. “Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal,” March 22 1989.
[5] Amy L Brooks, et. al. “The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade.” Environmental Studies of Science Advances 4:6
[6] Adomas Balkevicius, et. al. “Fending off Waste from the West: The impact of China’s Operation Green Fence on the international waste trade.” World Economy.
[7] Katz, Cheryl. “Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling.” Yale Environment 360. Last modified March 7, 2019. https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-importing-waste-has-stalled-global-recycling.
[8] “National Sword.” 99% Invisible. Last modified February 12, 2019. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/national-sword/.
[9] Xia, Ying. “China’s Environmental Campaign: How China’s ‘War on Pollution’ Is Transforming the International Trade in Waste.” International Law and Politics 51:1101 (July 29, 2019): 1103-78.
[10] Adomas Balkevicius, et. al. “Fending off Waste from the West: The impact of China’s Operation Green Fence on the international waste trade.” World Economy.
[11] Katz, Cheryl. “Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling.” Yale Environment 360. Last modified March 7, 2019. https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-importing-waste-has-stalled-global-recycling.
[12] Margolis, Jason. “Mountains of US recycling pile up as China restricts imports.” PRI. Last modified January 1, 2018. https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-01-01/mountains-us-recycling-pile-china-restricts-imports.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] New South Wales Australia. Response to the enforcement of the China National Sword Policy. By Environmental Protection Agency. November 28, 2018. https://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/your-environment/recycling-and-reuse/response-to-china-national-sword.
[16] Cheryl Katz. “Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling.” Yale Environment 360. Last modified March 7, 2019. https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-importing-waste-has-stalled-global-recycling.
[17] Wang, Chao, Longfeng Zhao, Ming K. Lim, Wei-Qiang Chen, and John W. Sutherland. “Structure of the global plastic waste trade network and the impact of China’s import Ban.” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 153 (February 2020) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2019.104591.
[18] Katz, Cheryl. “Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling.” Yale Environment 360. Last modified March 7, 2019. https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-importing-waste-has-stalled-global-recycling.
[19] Secretary-General of the United Nations. “Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.”
[20] Bill Chappell. “Philippines’ Duterte Talks Trash (Literally) To Canada, Threatening War Over Garbage.” NPR. Last modified April 24, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/24/716692612/philippines-duterte-talks-trash-literally-to-canada-threatening-war-over-garbage.
