My Take | Let’s have a hi-tech solution to recycling
China has been the dumping ground for waste from the developed world and it’s about time the city took care of its own rubbish
Many of our streets have been buried in paper and plastic waste in the past week. Barges bound for the mainland are filled to the brim with bushels of scrap newspapers and cardboard with nowhere to go.
They have been the result of an industrial action, now called off, led by the recycling trade. If this is not a wake-up call, I don’t know what is.
Yet, we can’t blame the trade or the new mainland ban on the import of unsorted and unprocessed waste from the end of this year.
China has been the dumping ground for waste from the developed world. Unless it does something drastic, many of its people will be buried literally in garbage.
If anyone is to blame, it’s ourselves; and also a government that has pandered, for years, to our selfishness and thoughtlessness. The way forward is a no-brainer, or rather we no longer have a choice: a hi-tech recycling industry backed by a waste management policy and law that have been standard in many developed countries for many years.
