From grubby packaging engulfing small Southeast Asian communities to waste piling up in plants from the U.S. to Australia, China’s ban on accepting the world’s used plastic has plunged global recycling into turmoil. For many years, China received the bulk of scrap plastic from around the world, processing much of it into a higher quality […]

In Philadelphia, people like to recycle. Together, all 1.6 million of us generate about 400 tons of recyclable material each day. But since last fall, roughly half of the bottles and cans my neighbors and I have placed dutifully curbside in our blue bins every week haven’t made their way to a sorting facility. They’ve […]

Recycling was shaken up by China’s trash ban. On January 1, China stopped taking 24 types of waste and recyclable items like plastic and paper from overseas. China was the biggest buyer of New Zealand’s waste and recyclables. The change meant councils had to find other overseas buyers for recyclable waste, but that came with a whole new set of recycling guidelines […]