UK 'Faces Build-up of Plastic Waste' (bbc.com) 308
The UK's recycling industry says it doesn't know how to cope with a Chinese ban on imports of plastic waste. From a report: Britain has been shipping up to 500,000 tonnes of plastic for recycling in China every year, but now the trade has been stopped. At the moment the UK cannot deal with much of that waste, says the UK Recycling Association. Its chief executive, Simon Ellin, told the BBC he had no idea how the problem would be solved in the short term. "It's a huge blow for us... a game-changer for our industry," he said. "We've relied on China so long for our waste... 55% of paper, 25% plus of plastics. "We simply don't have the markets in the UK. It's going to mean big changes in our industry." China has introduced the ban from this month on "foreign garbage" as part of a move to upgrade its industries.
Not surprising, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
China now produces plenty of waste of their own, and they are struggling to handle their own volume of garbage. It's no surprise they would stop accepting anyone else's.
There's always Africa, right?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Time for plastic roadways! There's already a pilot project in the UK.
Re: (Score:3)
Time for plastic roadways! There's already a pilot project in the UK.
Here in Arizona we have rubber freeways. No more ugly, flammable piles of old tires.
Re:Not surprising, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
China now produces plenty of waste of their own, and they are struggling to handle their own volume of garbage.
The only labor intensive part is the separating. I spent 4 months in China last year (2017), and the garbage sorting requirements are strict, with fines for failure to comply. It seemed like everyone was sorting properly, at least where I was living (Shanghai/Pudong).
There's always Africa, right?
Cheap labor is only part of the problem. You also need the industrial infrastructure to process and use the recycled plastic. A big advantage in China, is that the production of plastic is very close to the demand for it.
It would have been nice if China had phased out their recycling more slowly, to give the rest of the world time to adapt.
The real solution is not recycling, but reduction in the use of so much plastic crap in the first place. Many things I buy have more packaging than product.
Re:Not surprising, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? This way they can expect some concessions in exchange for phasing it out. If they'd just announced that they were going to phase things out over two years, the UK would have had time to adapt, and no real need to make nice with China in trade talks or whatever....
Re:Not surprising, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
The western world has had plenty of time to adapt. The problem is our allowing money to dictate policy and price. We have been able ship our waste on to other people and their territories all along and keep consuming without paying the true price of said consumption. With virgin sources of plastic and other first-use resources being cheaper, we have not yet been forced by "free markets" to adapt. Landfills will be our only exploitable "natural resources" one day. Re-use, recycling, and reduction will be the only practical option for all but the wealthy in time if we're still here.
Re:Not surprising, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
Selfish people don't get the value in reducing, reuse, and recycling, because this requires an long-term view. It requires consideration for others that are here today and that are to come. A side from this, those of us lucky enough to have real choice can choose to do something that is best for society even when it isn't best for us, especially in the moment. We can choose to do something that is good for the planet and the other creatures and plants with which we share it. Now, we can, instead, still be selfish assholes and live differently to do our part to make the planet a better place now and in the future for just those that we care about, our families and friends' families. We can be even more selfish by doing what we can now to protect the world we'll be living in as we age. It will just be better for society and the planet for us to do more by not being so selfish. I have little faith in mankind despite our potential to be better. Actually, I see little potential as I believe humans' selfishness is too deeply ingrained.
Re:Not surprising, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was born, there was 3.5 billion people on this planet. Now there is about 7.5 billion people. Because of technological progress, we could all live a great life. Unfortunately, "selfish" people decided to have children.
Because I decided to never have children, even if I'd drive a hummer and never cared about recycling, I would still be less "selfish" than people who chose to have children.
Re:Not surprising, really. (Score:4, Funny)
Indeed, I curse the selfish people that chose to have you.
Re:Not surprising, really. (Score:5, Interesting)
The real solution is not recycling, but reduction in the use of so much plastic crap in the first place. Many things I buy have more packaging than product.
This. Exactly this.
People assume plastic is easily recyclable, because collecting e.g. plastic bottles for recycling is so ubiquitous. However, of the four "recyclables" we all think of when we think of our garbage (metal, paper, glass, plastic), plastic is the least recyclable. For example, the most common type of plastic bottles - PET bottles - hardly ever get recycled into new plastic bottles. They get turned into other, usually lower-grade products. So while we are reusing the PET material, we are not really "recycling" the PET bottles. We can truly recycle paper - make old paper into paper - as well as glass bottles - make new ones out of old ones - and aluminium cans - ditto. While we can make a glass bottle over and over again from the same pieces of glass, we cannot do this with plastic bottles - so most plastic bottles are made out of "virgin" plastic.
Furthermore, you can't just throw different types of plastics together, melt 'em, and get something usable (like you can with many metals), because such plastic mixtures are structurally weak (due to the phase separation of the different plastics). This means that proper sorting is key to recycling plastic. Furthermore, this means that some "exotic" plastic compounds made for a particular application (i.e. those not super-common like PET or PE) will end up in the landfill (or floating in the ocean) despite someone conscientiously throwing it initially in the recycling bin. Plastic has low value and plastics that are not produced in extremely high quantities are not lucrative for recycling.
We need to be aggressive about reducing the amount of plastic packaging used: we should go as far as banning it. A lot of plastic packaging is just simply unnecessary, a lot of other plastic packaging can be replaced with paper, metal, or glass packaging. In my book the worst offender is the transparent "product-shaped" type of packaging that allows you to see the product (but is actually totally useless, since you can't open it without destroying the package...so what's the point?). Most of those products can be placed inside a cardboard box. That can be opened and closed...the vendor can have one product on display (like is usually the case anyway), the rest can be in non-transparent cardboard boxes. This type of packaging needs to be banned everywhere, ASAP.
Re:Not surprising, really. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's much easier, cheaper and probably better for the environment to grind plastic and burn it. It can be done cleanly at scale. Plus, people who use plastic typically need electricity. Shipping it half-way around the world to pay people to manually sort icky garbage is not a long-term solution.
We burn plastic here in Eastern Pennsylvania because it's basically worthless, but I'm not sure why they don't just open it up to all types of plastic instead of just HDPE and PET.
There's no good way to recycle rechargeable batteries, small amount of copper and other metals, either.
Re:Not surprising, really. (Score:5, Informative)
We burn plastic here in Eastern Pennsylvania because it's basically worthless, but I'm not sure why they don't just open it up to all types of plastic instead of just HDPE and PET.
Probably because those are easiest for the scrubbers to handle. PVC for example releases dioxin when burned. At high enough temperatures it's destroyed, but those temps are very high and they are difficult to guarantee throughout a combustion chamber at atmospheric pressure.
Re: (Score:3)
China has stopped taking the West's "recycling" because it was too contaminated for them to use and it went to their garbage stream. It wasn't just one day China said that they weren't going to take the plastics. It's been a long time of them having to say that the stuff being sent over wasn't being prepared properly. If we in the West would separate it properly then China would gladly take it. But to make the programs work we have to tell people to throw it all into one box and then invent mechanical separ
I know how to fix this (Score:5, Insightful)
How about building recycling plants in your own country? Or is that too much to ask?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You're forgetting this is the UK we're talking about.
We've forgotten how to do things for ourselves here, we're now just a nation of outsourcing and reselling other peoples crap. Oh and red tape, lots and lots of red tape.
In fact, so much red tape that even if we wanted a new plastics recycling facility to replace outsourcing it to China, it would take several years for the bureaucrats just to come an agreement on a name for it.
Re: (Score:3)
At least we won't have to ask permission from the barmy Brussels bureaucrats, thanks to that nice Mr. Farage.
He's always so well turned-out, isn't he?
Re: (Score:3)
I'm sure brexiteers will be more than happy to have waste recycling plants built near their homes.
Re:I know how to fix this (Score:5, Funny)
"Oh and red tape, lots and lots of red tape.
In fact, so much red tape that even if we wanted a new plastics recycling facility to replace outsourcing it to China, it would take several years for the bureaucrats just to come an agreement on a name for it."
Not to mention that the red tape would end up as plastic waste as well.
Re: (Score:2)
You're forgetting this is the UK we're talking about.... .... red tape, lots and lots of red tape.
It's not red tape anymore. It's green tape.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: I know how to fix this (Score:3)
China's wages have been among the lowest, and as a result were very cost effective. I believe they were also the least regulated.
The U.K has a limited amount of land for building these projects, and it is likely that citizens or allied nations will be downwind and/or downstream of the facility, requiring expensive procedures to minimize the spread of toxic chemicals. Additionally, labor to work at these
Re: I know how to fix this (Score:4, Interesting)
How much of the problem is wages, and how much is regulation (environmental impact studies, multitude of lawsuit by NIMBY "greens", how to store it, wash it, what to do with waste water, etc, etc)?
Re: I know how to fix this (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with the AC, the cost of recycling in a first world country is almost prohibitively expensive.
The real problem is likely that the way we live our first-world lives is unsustainable, given we haven't been solving the waste problem so much as displacing it off to some third-world foreigners.
That doesn't necessarily mean our quality of life has to drop... but at a minimum we probably need to rethink how product packaging is handled, instead of "okay, now how do we get rid of all this excess plastic and paper"?
Re: (Score:2)
That's the first of the three R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Re: (Score:2)
Like the YumEarth organic, vegan, dye free, non-GMO, kosher pareve, gluten free candy and nut free sweets that are individually wrapped in so much plastic it even shocks a Republican!!
Re: (Score:3)
Labour costs are too high for manual sorting like is widely used in China. As always, it'll need to be tech to the rescue. For example, modern plants can use processes like cryofreezing to make even foams brittle, crushing/grinding waste it into granules, separating by density, and optical sorting (spectral analysis) to assess colour, transparency, composition and quality.
Re:I know how to fix this (Score:5, Funny)
That's utopia. More realistic: Ship it to Wales.
Re:I know how to fix this (Score:4)
We were planning on paying a bunch of people UBI anyway. So they can just report to a sorting center for their work assignments.
Re: (Score:2)
Labour costs are too high for manual sorting like is widely used in China.
Sounds like something the market will sort out once plastics are piling up at people's doorsteps.
Re: (Score:2)
What? Crazy talk.
Makes way more sense to ship garbage half way around the world.
Re: (Score:3)
As others have already pointed out, ships are going back empty anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Easiest, cheapest answer: landfills.
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't the first time that China has pulled a "bait and switch". First they underbid all competition, which is easy with an abundant cheap workforce and lenient environmental protection. You can't run a recycling plant without customers. Eventually the last recyclers in the west shut down, because all the recyclable trash and a lot that isn't recyclable goes to China. When the world relies on China, they crash the system by changing the rules. Remember the rare earths fiasco? Same thing. Rare earths don
Re: (Score:2)
Or they could burn it to generate electricity instead of cutting down forests in North America and carting the wood across the Atlantic Yes, they really do that. Honest.
Of course, it wouldn't count as "renewable".
Maybe they could redefine "renewable"
Re: (Score:2)
Or they could burn it to generate electricity instead of cutting down forests in North America and carting the wood across the Atlantic Yes, they really do that. Honest.
No, they really don't - they don't generate electricity in the UK by burning wood.
If you insist they do, please provide the locations and capacity of these wood-fired electricity generating plants.
Re: (Score:3)
Drax, Yorkshire. It used to be a coal-buring hellmouth, and Greens were mighty proud when they converted the massive plant to wood pellets. Unfortunately, all the trees in Yorkshire were burned for firewoood centuries ago, so the fuel comes from pulpwood trees in the American South, brought in by a fleet of diesel-belching bulk cargo ships. Yessiree, the Greens are totally proud of this accomplishment.
Re: (Score:2)
How about building recycling plants in your own country? Or is that too much to ask?
Sure they could build recycling plants...but from whom?
If you import a bunch of plastic crap from China (like the UK and almost any Western country does), that means you're not making the plastic crap yourself. That means that once that plastic crap becomes garbage, you have no one who will buy that garbage once it is recycled into a raw material. Hence you ship it to China, which can use it to make more plastic crap. To send back to you.
Re: (Score:2)
...Or they could start manufacturing plastic crap at home, in the UK.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
They could teach a few hard-working, incredibly smart middle eastern refugees to run the recycling plant - they happen to have a few hundred thousand sitting around doing nothing.
I know this isn't politically correct (Score:5, Interesting)
But plastic waste should be burned for energy. It's made of oil, and most plastics aren't really recycled. They're used to make other things, but there's no net savings of any kind. Burning them would solve the waste problem and extract useful energy.
Re: I know this isn't politically correct (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Plastic needs to be mixed with fuel. so it burns hot enough. It's a solved problem, but 'greenies'.
Re: (Score:3)
Nope. The combustion products stink of patchouli.
Re: (Score:2)
Duuuuuude, the smoke, the SMOKE....
Anyone else havin' the munchies?
Re: I know this isn't politically correct (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't get it hot enough, it produces large amounts of Doixins which are not nice at all.
Burning PVC can produce dioxin.
Burning polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene produces CO2 and water.
Sort out the vinyl, and almost everything else will burn clean.
You can burn the vinyl too if you keep the temperature high, and/or mix in some powdered limestone to suck the chlorine out of the flue gas. If you are mixing the plastic with coal, then you will need the limestone anyway to scrub out the sulfates.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Recycling is a complex process, burning is not.
Also, we'd have to only separate the plastic into two piles, not several. We separate the chlorine containing plastics from those that don't. We can burn one pile. The other pile, maybe burn that too but in a facility equipped to contain the chlorine. Where do we put the chlorine? Recycle that. Put it in new plastics, use it for water treatment, whatever.
PVC can be recycled, though I question the economics of it. We could also burn it without separation
Re: (Score:2)
Burning PVC can produce dioxin.
Burning polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene produces CO2 and water.
Sort out the vinyl, and almost everything else will burn clean.
Incidentally, plastic recycling stations in Finland accept everything but PVC. I'd like to think there is some actual recycling going on, since there are separate bins for combustibles. I guess there are concerns about chlorine compounds even at melting temperatures.
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't get it hot enough, it produces large amounts of Doixins which are not nice at all.
So, get it hot enough. These aren't big headscratcher type problems.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I assume you don't know that plastic is more valuable than steel. Still want to burn it?
Re: (Score:2)
Burning steel would be awesome
Re: (Score:2)
Burning steel would be awesome
IS awesome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:I know this isn't politically correct (Score:5, Insightful)
The first solution is to tax plastic packaging to make it significantly less attractive to use it for single-use applications. Once you artificially inflate that cost to reduce volume, you can likely burn a good part of it for energy, or subsidize recycling costs.
The likes of Amazon need to be doing more to encourage sustainable packaging... which helps them lower their cost; it is asinine to ship shoplift-resistant packaging to the end user.
Re:I know this isn't politically correct (Score:5, Informative)
The first solution is to tax plastic packaging to make it significantly less attractive to use it for single-use applications. Once you artificially inflate that cost to reduce volume, you can likely burn a good part of it for energy, or subsidize recycling costs.
Right now we are artificially reducing costs by not including the externality of waste disposal (often just of the packaging itself) in the cost of the product. In some areas waste disposal costs are being added to products (engine oil, tires, auto batteries, electronics) already. If these costs are imposed based on the packaging used, more intelligent packaging choices are likely to be made.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think of it as artificially inflating the cost. It's clear that the plastic industry and plastic consumers have externalized their costs on to everyone else.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Huh? Yes there is. It is economically cheaper to recycle aluminum than it is to process from ore.
(Its ore is the oxide, the usual way to reduce it to metal involves a lot of electricity. It's do-able, sure, but cheaper to just melt already metallic aluminum.)
THAT's why it's done so much--there's a clear profit motive!
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? Yes there is. It is economically cheaper to recycle aluminum than it is to process from ore.
No, if it weren't for the CRV then few people would recycle cans. It wouldn't be worth the effort to pick them up off the ground.
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? Yes there is. It is economically cheaper to recycle aluminum than it is to process from ore.
No, if it weren't for the CRV then few people would recycle cans. It wouldn't be worth the effort to pick them up off the ground.
So, having aluminum cans (which never deteriorate) littering the ground is not a problem for you? Do you live in one of those third world garbage "cities"?
Given that we are not all disposing of our aluminum by throwing it on the ground, then melting it down is indeed a profitable activity.
Re: (Score:2)
Millions of Americans recycle cans without a deposit - it's called recycling and most American communities engage in it.
Re: I know this isn't politically correct (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Recycling aluminum is much less energy intensive compared to smelting ore......But that is not the entire picture.
Yes, that's right......energy use is only one small portion of the total cost.
Re: (Score:2)
How aluminium do you get from a certain amount of bauxite. Got to be less than 100%, unless phlogiston really is a thing after all. By my reckoning it's about half, tops.
So why would it make sense to dig out & transport two tons of ore instead of one ton of metal that's literally just lying there?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I know this isn't politically correct (Score:4, Informative)
Add to that: there's almost no point in recycling aluminum. It's extremely plentiful on earth and landfills aren't actually a problem
Piling on because it's important - aluminum absolutely should be recycled. Turning bauxite (oxidized aluminum) into metal is far more expensive than simply melting and reforming aluminum. Same with steel and glass.
Plastic is very different. It can't be melted back to a liquid, so reuse of the raw material is limited.
Cardboard is another good candidate for recycling, and even paper. Anything that can be recycled should be recycled. Plastic? Burn it.
Re: (Score:2)
Because then they would grow up to be plastic fish, and they would not taste very good.
Re:I know this isn't politically correct (Score:4, Informative)
Study retracted. [theguardian.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Of course we're emitting CO2. That's not going to stop. Plastic is going to break down eventually, anyway, just long periods naturally.
Do you want Autons? (Score:2)
Because that's how you get Autons.
mother of invention (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The is the UK - America's outpost for neoliberalism in Europe. The correct answer is that we should give more tax cuts to the rich so they can come up with a solution to the problem for us. Our ruling class promises us that this is how the economy works...
Trump Derangement Syndrome much?
Seriously, just build your own damn recycling plant... Shipping waste half-way around the globe was never a long-term solution.
They made the case for not shipping to China (Score:3)
The graph linked shows only China mismanaged over 5 Million tonnes of plastic waste.
http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc... [bbc.com]
Not unique to the UK (Score:3)
It's a problem in every developed part of the world, as is proper disposal of e-waste [smithsonianmag.com]. We simply can't keep this up.
I am buying as little as possible of both. Choosing foods that have as little packaging as possible, bringing my own container to the butcher, baker, resisting upgrading or buying gadgets as much as possible and finding people who can actually use my old stuff.
Why not crack and refine them? (Score:2)
Negotiate a trade deal with China (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Screw China. Fill the channel tunnel up with it. That way it both gets rid of trash and keeps the illegal immigrants out.
Trojan Rabbit (Score:5, Funny)
If that doesn't work perhaps a large plastic Badger?
Lesson time (Score:2)
I would advise the British govt not to do anything. There's nothing like being up to one's neck in plastic shit to drive home the consequences of a total lack of giving a shit.
Geez... (Score:2)
This is an EASY problem to solve - simply build your own plastic recycling plant! It's a known science, and think how much better the planet will be when you don't have to ship your recycling half-way around the planet.
If you start recycling plastic, you'll have the raw materials to create plastic trash in your own UK factories - a huge environmental win and a great job creator. You'll have new jobs building and then running the plastic recycling plant, and then when you realize you have a glut of raw mater
Burn it (Score:2)
I remember my chemistry professor in college commenting on the stupidity of recycling plastic. We haul around this plastic and burn a lot of fuel doing it. As I recall the neighboring city was at the time proposing a waste burning power plant. Made sense to me. Burn the plastic so we're not just burning more oil to keep moving it around.
I know the adage, any simple solution to a complex problem is often wrong. I'm trying to see the failure in this simple solution.
I understand that these plastic burning
Astonishing! (Score:5, Interesting)
So oil companies, which are subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars per year, use their unfair market advantage to transport plastic (also made from oil) to Third World countries like China, where it is disposed of in ways that are at best questionable, at worst environmentally disastrous. In so doing, they sell more plastic and more transportation-related oil and gasoline. This is called "recycling", and corporate-owned First World governments allow the situation to continue unchallenged.
People pointing out that transporting plastic to Third World countries is economically viable mainly due to these subsidies are dismissed as "tree-huggers", "eco-warriors" and "Global Warming alarmists".
Petro-chemical companies have been externalizing the cost of manufacturing, distributing and disposing of plastic for decades. They have also been lobbying with great success against even small subsidies for renewable energy generation. And thanks to sophisticated marketing campaigns similar to those that kept the debate about tobacco's health effects going for decades longer than necessary, uninformed and willfully-ignorant voters continue to allow them to get away with this.
Ironically, it is one of those Third World countries, one with a frighteningly authoritarian government, that appears to be throwing a monkey wrench into the petro-chemical industry's smoothly-operating, oil-consuming pollution machine.
I wish I thought this was good news, rather than just an indication that the existing system will simply start looking for different markets for First World garbage.
Re: (Score:3)
I've been spending new year in a poor area of a developing country - the Philippines - visiting family. Although it is illegal for super-markets to use plastic bags. The hawker stores here sell everything in little plastic sachets. Eg if someone wants to wash their hair, they buy a sachet of shampoo, then three days later come back for another one. Ditto for toothpaste, cups of noodles. Actually just about everything.
When there's no trash collection service, the rate of pile-up is alarming. Horrible wrapper
Re: (Score:3)
Stupid packaging (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is caused by the ridiculous packaging that most items come in...
More than 90% of my weekly trash is made up of plastic packaging, usually the packaging is much larger than the item it contained and is designed to look pretty on the shelf.
Packaging should be more sensible... Plain cardboard that can biodegrade or be easily recycled, glass bottles that can be cleaned and reused (not melted down and recycled as that's a hugely energy intensive process).
If only... (Score:3)
...there were some supra-national bloc of countries that could pool their resources and have a joint approach to this, that the UK could be a part of and...
DOH.
Re:How ecologically sound! (Score:5, Insightful)
The ships go back to China anyway, so sending them back full of plastic waste instead of empty still makes sense from an environmental perspective. If trade weren't so imbalanced, your comment would be spot-on.
Re: (Score:2)
Plus the plastic that can be reused to make new shit is made into new shit where? China.
Re: (Score:3)
stop using other countries as their own cheap dumping ground
I think the argument is that plastic is a petroleum resource, and China as a global manufacturing base has a lot more capacity to use recycled plastics than GB. If you are going to make the effort to recycle, then it is only logical to return the recycled material to the manufacturing center.
As to the moral question, remember which country it is that is using so much disposable plastic in their manufactured goods. No one holds the high ground - there is demand and there is supply.
Re: (Score:2)
it's not that bad
how about Emma Mearsk that can carry 154,000 tons but burns 380 tons of oil a day for 30 days to do UK to China trip. 11,400 tons of fuel to move 154,000 tons of plastic....hmmm, that seems okay to me
Re: (Score:2)
Because the ships aren’t already going back anyway? It would be a bigger waste to have them go back empty.
Re: (Score:3)
Isn't there a higher-value cargo the UK/EU could send to China on these ships instead of waste plastic and e-waste?
Re:How ecologically sound! (Score:5, Funny)
So use tons of oil to ship plastic -
If something's going by ship, that part is likely by far the most efficient. I calculated it once: shipping white goods from China to the UK by boat takes less oil per item than moving the item from the shop to your house by lorry.
The large cargo ships are incredibly efficient.
Re: How ecologically sound! (Score:2)
Does that factor in the footprint of making a floating steel cathedral?
Re: (Score:3)
Does that factor in the footprint of making a floating steel cathedral?
No, I computed marginal costs only for the two journeys. I didn't factor in the cost of creating a legion of road vehicles either.
The mistake most people make is looking at those ships and thinking they're MASSIVE, then extrapolating that. Thing is while they're massive they represent a large concentrated cost, they do a vast amount, so the result is actually efficient in terms of footprint per thing shipped.
Re: (Score:3)
They'd stop be 'developing' and go back to being 'dirt poor'?
Re: (Score:2)
(which in turn is dwarfed by US/Canada/Australia).
Pretty much our entire nation is in a cold weather alert (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/extreme-cold-national-1.4468792) so pardon us for heating our homes.
London +8C
brussels +6C
Toronto -13C
Resolute - 26C
By the end of the week, Toronto will be as cold as Resolute is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But we can't build an infrastructure to recycle our plastic waste?
We had one, it's called China, but China is trying to break it's addiction to our trash, so now we need a NEW plan - build a recycling plant locally, don't ship your trash half-way around the globe.