Malaysia Will Stop Accepting US Plastic Waste (msn.com) 55
An anonymous reader shares a report: Malaysia will ban plastic waste imports from the U.S. starting Tuesday because of America's failure to abide by the Basel Convention treaty on international waste transfers, in a move that could have significant consequences for California.
Malaysia emerged as a major destination for U.S. waste after China banned American waste imports in 2018. California shipped 864 shipping containers, or more than 10 million pounds of plastic waste, to Malaysia in 2024, according to the Basel Action Network, an advocacy group. That was second only to Georgia among U.S. states.
Under Malaysian waste guidelines announced last month, the country will no longer accept plastic waste and hazardous waste from nations that didn't ratify the Basel Convention, the international treaty designed to reduce the international movement of hazardous and other waste. The U.S. is one of just a handful of countries, including Fiji and Haiti, that hasn't signed the pact.
Malaysia emerged as a major destination for U.S. waste after China banned American waste imports in 2018. California shipped 864 shipping containers, or more than 10 million pounds of plastic waste, to Malaysia in 2024, according to the Basel Action Network, an advocacy group. That was second only to Georgia among U.S. states.
Under Malaysian waste guidelines announced last month, the country will no longer accept plastic waste and hazardous waste from nations that didn't ratify the Basel Convention, the international treaty designed to reduce the international movement of hazardous and other waste. The U.S. is one of just a handful of countries, including Fiji and Haiti, that hasn't signed the pact.
More melamine than man now, twisted & evil. (Score:3)
Re:Tariff 'em! (Score:4, Funny)
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Uh, you understand the fewer than 900 containers contained sorted garbage already, in the form of recyclable plastic, right? It was sorted before it was put on an otherwise empty cargo ship heading back to Asia.
Yes, we could recycle it here in the USA, but then the container ship would be heading back to Asia with empty containers, why not ship some recyclables to them, let them turn them into Christmas decorations or car dashboards?
Source? [Re:Tariff 'em!] (Score:2)
Uh, you understand the fewer than 900 containers contained sorted garbage already, in the form of recyclable plastic, right?
Source? The article says that California alone shipped 864 shipping containers of plastic to Malaysia... and California was second to Georgia in the amount shipped.
It was sorted before it was put on an otherwise empty cargo ship
Source? There was no indication that this was sorted plastic, and I would find that quite unlikely, since labor costs of sorting are much lower in Malaysia than in the US.
Yes, we could recycle it here in the USA, but then the container ship would be heading back to Asia with empty containers, why not ship some recyclables to them, let them turn them into Christmas decorations or car dashboards?
They are taking the plastic because they are being paid to take it, not because they want it. According to the article:
Re:Tariff 'em! (Score:4, Interesting)
And yes, I know, the reality is 1) this won't become manufactured products, most of this plastic will be garbage and we'll blame Asian countries for being big plastic polluters and 2) this is not cool manufacturing, this is dirty, low-value manufacturing, and the US doesn't want to deal with that. It's hypocrisy at its finest. We want to have others clean up our junk and garbage, and only repatriate high-value manufacturing. In the meantime, tariffs on any country that exports to us more than we export to them. Nevermind the fact they export more because they're poor and can't buy our expensive shit, and we ship them literal garbage that they're trying to turn into Christmas decorations to sell to us.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of Sweden's household waste gets incinerated and energy generated. This is definitely not carbon-neutral, but if the baseline power generation is already net carbon, incinerating waste to help make power is not a bad idea.
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Sure for the entire 10 or 12 of them. Scale matters.
Re: More melamine than man now, twisted & evil (Score:2)
But, but!! (Score:1)
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Sorting plastic is useful even if most of it is going to be burned.
* Some types of plastic are much easier to recycle than others
* Some types of plastic can't be easily recycled, but are good for downcycling (such as use as filler materials)
* Most types of plastic are fine to burn, but you don't want to burn chlorinated or fluorinated plastic (at least not with very strong pollution controls)
So sorting your waste is good. In our system, we have four types: "hard plastic" (which is p
Good for them... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Did you even read the link you shared? The garbage barge went from NYC to NC, who refused it due to medical waste included in the cargo. After cruising around the east coast for 3 months it was finally DOCKED in NJ and the trash incinerated in NYC.
NJ did not send the barge adrift on the Atlantic Ocean.
The waste did not end up in in Spain or Belize.
It was not a barge full of recyclable plastic.
It was not a major diplomatic issue in the 1980s.
Aside from those few issues, you were spot-on! /sarcasm
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Did you even read the link you shared? ... NJ did not send the barge adrift on the Atlantic Ocean.
Obligatory Futurama [youtube.com].
Fucking stop making so much plastic (Score:1)
It's absolutely stupid and embarrassing that we have so much plastic in our lives. Everything I purchase has layers of useless plastic. A plastic bag around plastic wrap around bread. A plastic carton for cherries that could be made of paper. Plastic wrapped around plastic containers for eggs, when it could be paper to hold the eggs and paper on top with some paper tape around to keep it all together. This paper tissue box has plastic on top to hold in the tissues. Not necessary.
I don't mind plastic a
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And while we're at it, let's go back to glass deposit/return bottles for sodas.
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That's how I used to get arcade quarters when I was a kid. Make the products actually returnable and recyclable for a little cash and the neighborhood kids will do the rest. :) We collected thousands of aluminum cans too for a little more arcade cash.
Glass was reusable (Score:2)
I have a 30+ year old apple juice jug that I use to keep all the coins found in pockets when I'm doing laundry. I have old glass jelly jars that get reused for everything from home canning to, pen holders, to "crap I filled up old juice jug again with quarters". Can't say I've ever been inspired to keep a plastic squeeze bottle.
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Interestingly I was talking at the weekend to a guy who used to work for a soda company here. He said the glass bottles used to be made and filled locally where he worked because they were heavy and difficult to transport, but switching to plastic allowed the company to centralize production in a city hundreds of miles away and ship them here instead. And, obviously, sack him and most of the other local workers.
But the MBAs got a boost to their stock options.
Re:Glass was reusable (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah it feels excessive. It's little but a ridiculous example I think of is there are some ramen bowls at Costco I have gotten. It's a little plastic bowl, wrapped in plastic wrap and inside are 4 little packets of the sauce and seasonings and all of them are in individual little plastic sachets. Just feels like a ridiculous amount of waste for something that comes out to like $1.68. Plus we all remember those giant blister packs retailers were so fond of a decade or so ago.
I think the public pressure
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It's a little bit of both. One of the nice things I've seen recently is one of the major toilet paper companies is increasingly using paper for its packaging, which used to be a thing up until the 90s. Maybe before long the fast food place will switch back to waxed paper cups instead of whatever they're doing now.
Food Waste (Score:4, Informative)
Plastic prevents tood waste.
Replacing plastic with paper, would result in more food waste.
Food waste is already THE NUMBER ONE Co2 contributor after transportation, with 46% of food produced being wasted.
And you're suggesting making it worse, in order to reduce the volume of something that is inert and could just be buried for all of eternity.
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Inert. You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
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I think you're the one who doesn't know what it means.
Plastic is highly inert. Thats why it has the properties it has in the first place.
Of course it is not perfectly inert, but neither are most things. It's certainly not any more dangerous in a landfill than any number of other non-man-made substances, things like lead and arsenic.
Re: Food Waste (Score:2)
Nice cover for the fact that what you said was not true. At all.
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Plastic prevents tood waste.
No. Plastic prevents food waste caused by perception. There is zero reason for food waste given our current distribution channels and the speed at which produce gets from its source to destination. The problem is you (and me) the consumer, the ones who will reject the not "perfect" food item. Plastic helps maintain food in pristine condition, but the concept of waste falls firmly on us.
And you're suggesting making it worse, in order to reduce the volume of something that is inert and could just be buried for all of eternity.
You're acting like this is a solved problem. Landfills are a major issue, especially for plastic which don't break down; th
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You really need to get some help.
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Okay cool now what about Malaysia? Care to actually discuss that?
Re:Fucking stop making so much plastic (Score:5, Informative)
People usually assume that all the plastic they see around food is "waste", when in reality it's usually carefully engineered to maximize shelf life, and thus minimize food waste. And the energy / resources needed to make that miniscule amount of plastic and the issues with its disposal are well worth offsetting wasted energy producing, processing, and transporting a larger fraction of food that just goes to waste.
Plastic around fresh fruit? That's maintaining it at an optimal humidity and/or reducing the risk of scratches that lead to spoilage. Metalized plastic wrap around your cookies in a box? The alumium is applied to that plastic to decrease water and oxygen transport by orders of magnitude, veritably eliminating the main ways in which food goes bad. On and on. And you know what the alternative is to maximize the shelf life of foods? Preservatives. You want more preservatives in your food? No? Then be happy with better-protective packaging.
And we all would love all of the plastic to be "biodegradable", but the problem is that waste doesn't come with a switch that says "Okay, now I'm done with you, fall apart". There's a steady process of biodegradable polymers becoming weaker and weaker, and letting orders of magnitude more oxygen and moisture through them. Basically, by the time they're at your supermarket, if it's at all easy to biodegrade, it's already doing a crappy job. Some products reduce (but not eliminate) these problems, but usually via requiring special conditions for quick decomposition, such as particularly high temperatures - but most landfills don't reach those conditions. And again, we're talking about generally grams of plastic, or even milligrams. This just isn't the big issue people make it out to be. Just burn it. Have good pollution controls on the incinerator, and just burn it. Just avoid chlorinated and fluorinated polymers that tend to produce more problematic combustion products.
Re:Fucking stop making so much plastic (Score:4, Informative)
(BTW, that's the reason why "Saran Wrap" is no longer made of Saran. Saran is a far better barrier polymer than the polyethylene that Saran Wrap is made of today, but Saran is polyvinylidene chloride, aka chlorinated - and almost invariably ends up in the trash, where it will get burned. The decision to switch to inferior polyethylene wrap was so that it would burn cleaner)
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Which means more food is consumed rather than thrown out, leading to the obesity epidemic. Yet another negative for plastic.
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You're really triggering Poe's Law here for me.
all that will happen is adding a middleman (Score:4, Insightful)
Plastic is garbage when it could be recycled (Score:2)
What will we do? (Score:1)
But if they stop accepting it, how can I feel morally superior while pretending the plastic is recyced?
Garbage (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We're no longer allowed to bury plastic because it requires digging holes and digging holes causes Climate Change or something.
This is why we now ship the plastic to the third world so they can throw it into the ocean instead.
It's funny because it is true. - H. Simpson
Low-T (Score:1, Interesting)
People ought to be incentivized to reduce plastic on their own, especially food, due to the estrogenic effects.
They say it's a "great mystery" why males have historical low testosterone and women have messed up cycles.
I just found out last week that my chewing gum (notionally a xylitol-carrier) is made with "gum base" which I presumed is a mixture of several plant and tree gums.
Nope! FDA allows, and the market dominates, mixtures containing polyethylene, polystyrene, etc. Real gums went out when I was a k
Haiti (Score:2)
Maybe we should ship plastic waste Haiti instead?
Re: (Score:2)
"to Haiti"
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The missing preposition got shipped to Haiti prematurely.
Unclear about impact (Score:1)
Malaysia will ban plastic waste imports from the U.S. starting Tuesday because of America's failure to abide by the Basel Convention treaty on international waste transfers, in a move that could have significant consequences for California.
OK, so this is really gonna hurt California, got it...
California shipped 864 shipping containers, or more than 10 million pounds of plastic waste, to Malaysia in 2024, according to the Basel Action Network, an advocacy group.
Wait, what? That's it? Less then nine hundred containers? That's it? That's just a tiny fraction of what a typical container ship carries in one trip! Container ships carry as many as 24,000 containers on one ship, these 900 containers represent less than one-half of one percent of one cargo ships content! And that will "severely impact" California?
That was second only to Georgia among U.S. states.
So, if Georgia exports more of this plastic waste than California, won't the impact on Georgia be, you know
Recycling Plastic Is a Dangerous Waste of Time (Score:2)
864 containers worth? (Score:2)
864 containers worth? That's barely 2 a day... considering they dump about 12,000 tons of plastic a day... this in inconsequential.
It's strange that they even needed to ship any outside of the state and didn't have the capacity/capability to deal with it locally. Curious if this a private firm that was doing something shady... doubt it's cheaper to load a container with plastic and have if shipped 9,500 miles to be disposed of.