The China Import Ban Issue

Posted July 11, 2018

In efforts to push their antipollution campaign, China passed the “National Sword” policy in July 2017 that bans the import of many different types of plastics and other recyclable materials from different countries. Recently, they passed another policy called “Blue Sky 2018” which created even stricter limits on the ban. Most of the U.S. used to rely on exporting mixed paper and plastics out to China where it would be further processed and made into new materials. Because of this ban however, the U.S. is unable to send its recyclable materials out to China and instead either has to send those materials to landfills or send it to other countries that can process it.

Since China was the major importer of recyclable materials, other countries such as Thailand and Vietnam are now being sent an overwhelming amount of materials and are unable to accommodate the large amount of plastics being sent. Because of this pile up, many countries have resorted to throwing the recyclable materials into landfills where they take much longer to decompose.

There are some recycled materials that China will take, however, they have enforced a very strict contamination policy which states that any material that is sent over has to have a contamination level of a maximum of 0.5%. The average contamination levels in the United States are about 25% and it is very difficult to lower those levels.

Things you can do to help:

Reduce the amount of plastics and paper you use on a daily basis.
Keep any recyclable material that does get recycled clean in order to keep the contamination levels as low as possible.
Start using reusable products such as water bottles and utensils.

The China Import Ban Issue

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