Thailand Bans Imports of Plastic Waste To Curb Toxic Pollution (theguardian.com) 22
Thailand has banned plastic waste imports over concerns about toxic pollution, as experts warn that failure to agree a global treaty to cut plastic waste will harm human health. From a report: A law banning imports of plastic waste came into force this month in Thailand, after years of campaigning by activists. Thailand is one of several south-east Asian countries that has historically been paid to receive plastic waste from developed nations. The country became a leading destination for exports of plastic waste from Europe, the US, the UK and Japan in 2018 after China, the world's biggest market for household waste, imposed a ban.
Japan is one of the biggest exporters of waste plastic to Thailand, with about 50m kg exported in 2023. Thai customs officials said more than 1.1m tonnes of plastic scraps were imported between 2018 and 2021. Imports of plastic were often mismanaged in Thailand, with many factories burning the waste rather than recycling it, leading to damage to human health and the environment.
Japan is one of the biggest exporters of waste plastic to Thailand, with about 50m kg exported in 2023. Thai customs officials said more than 1.1m tonnes of plastic scraps were imported between 2018 and 2021. Imports of plastic were often mismanaged in Thailand, with many factories burning the waste rather than recycling it, leading to damage to human health and the environment.
Trade War (Score:1)
Next up, Trump retaliates by banning goods made in Thailand...
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Uh oh. (Score:2)
If the countries we use as a dumpster stop volunteering to be our dumpsters, what are we gonna do with all that "recycling" we don't actually recycle? I don't think most "first world" countries, nor the US which is quickly falling out of the first world status, are prepared to deal with being forced to handle all their own garbage needs. This could upset the illusion that we're a clean country fairly quickly if it moves through the rest of the countries we've been shipping our garbage off to to avoid dealin
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Probably gonna need more landfills. There may be good money in solar thermal pyrolysis too.
Re:Uh oh. (Score:4, Informative)
If the countries we use as a dumpster stop volunteering to be our dumpsters, what are we gonna do with all that "recycling" we don't actually recycle?
For stuff like plastics... we can burn them. A good incinerator can (almost) fully convert the plastic to energy. The gasses can be captured and re-burnt. The waste is a negligible (relative to the amount of input material) bit of ash (carbon) to landfill. It just is not cheap to do this. It takes expensive equipment, and there are handling costs to the materials as well. The energy input to burn it is higher than the useful energy output, but some heat energy can be recovered and converted to electricity if we want.
We do not do this here (now) because it is more expensive than shipping the crap to somewhere else where they just burn it in an open-pit. But we could.
I guess you could also break it down chemically into petroleum sludge and redistil it into plastics stock again -but so far that is even less economically viable. It is much cheaper to buy pristine plastic stock made from ground-source petroleum distillate than to reprocess existing plastics. We currently partially-reprocess some plastics by grinding them into pellets that are mixed with new plastic stock to create what we call recycled plastics ("40% post-consumer!") because it is cheaper than chemically breaking it down and re-distilling, but it makes for weaker plastic -100% recycled is not viable via this method.
Or we could stop using plastic where it is not necessary -we have developed alternatives that are sufficient for many/most uses.
Re: Uh oh. (Score:1)
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I guess you could also break it down chemically into petroleum sludge and redistil it into plastics stock again -but so far that is even less economically viable. It is much cheaper to buy pristine plastic stock..
And there’s the real problem. When virgin plastic is cheaper than ANY recycling method, we already know what Greed will do.
If we need actual recycling programs, make virgin plastic as expensive as gold. That will certainly force Greed to make better choices. From an environmental perspective, it already should be priced like gold based on the wasteful toxic attitude humans have towards it.
Yeah. I get it. We still need plastic in many ways. What we don’t need, is to make every-fucking-thing
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I guess you could also break it down chemically into petroleum sludge and redistil it into plastics stock again -but so far that is even less economically viable. It is much cheaper to buy pristine plastic stock..
And there’s the real problem. When virgin plastic is cheaper than ANY recycling method, we already know what Greed will do.
If we need actual recycling programs, make virgin plastic as expensive as gold. That will certainly force Greed to make better choices. From an environmental perspective, it already should be priced like gold based on the wasteful toxic attitude humans have towards it.
Yeah. I get it. We still need plastic in many ways. What we don’t need, is to make every-fucking-thing out of it like we do today.
We could start with making packaging fuck off and die. There's no reason at all that a USB hub needs to arrive wrapped in plastic, under which there's a cardboard wrapper with a plastic window, inside of which is a plastic shell containing the doo-dads and cables, which are all wrapped up with still more plastic. There should be government fines for adding that much waste to a simple product. And if I hear one more bullshit excuse about how it's all required to prevent stealing, on something that's still sm
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The Idiocracy prophecy is getting closer every day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Burning (Score:2)
>"Imports of plastic were often mismanaged in Thailand, with many factories burning the waste rather than recycling it, leading to damage to human health and the environment."
Burning it only leads to "damage" if it isn't burned *properly*. Done correctly, it can supply energy while producing no toxic waste/gas nor microplastics. Of course, I know those factories aren't doing it properly (with controlled temps and air scrubbers/monitors/etc). I just wanted to point out that burning plastic is a valid s
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I probably should have said that properly-run incineration wouldn't EMIT toxic gases (instead of "producing no"). It might still produce them, even under ideal conditions, and they need to be captured/mitigated.
fucking awful arrticle (Score:2)
50m kg is 50,000 tons a year.
1.1m tons over 3 years is ~370,000 tons a year.
So therefore Japan represent less than 15% of the plastic waste being imported, So why single out Japan in that way?
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Everything in plastic (Score:2)
Anyone who ever visited Thailand knows, there is almost nothing anywhere in Thailand that isnt wrapped or packaged in plastic. Thais eat out daily and pretty much all the food ends up in little plastic bags, even to-go drinks with ice are filled into plastic bags. I did a temple tour with a whole bus of locals, young and old, and every temple visit was more like a carnival visit on the way in and out, lots of snacks and even more plastic packaging. By the end the bus was full of plastic wrappers.
It is clear
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Same with India, every little thing was sold in a plastic wrapper.
Homemade (Score:2)
Now Thailand can ban the plastic waste it produces