China has stopped taking our recycling and waste. Here's where it's ending up
Friday, 4 May 2018
The 'slums of Mumbai' are words which have been used to describe the Huntly Transfer Station.
A stockpile of recycling has been sitting at Huntly MetroWaste for about 12 months. At one point there was approximately 400 tonnes of baled plastic.
Resident Duncan Gillies takes his recyclables to the transfer station at least once month.
Each time he's shocked by the ever growing mountains of plastic.
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'You see pictures online of the dumps in India and that's what it is like,' Gillies said.
'It's a mess and there's loose plastic everywhere.'
It seems to be getting worse, Gillies said.
'They drive around with a front-end loader, sticking the plastic through a sorting machine, but the mountain never seems to get any smaller.'
There were stockpiles throughout New Zealand due to China restricting imports of waste products, Waikato District Council Service Delivery general manager Ian Cathcart said.
'This has impacted how the waste industry throughout the world deals with the disposal of recyclable material,' Cathcart said.
The Raglan Resource Recovery Centre, run by the community enterprise Xtreme Zero Waste, also has about five tonnes of plastic stockpiled at the moment.
The 400 tonnes stockpiled at Huntly has been reducing, as other markets have been found, Cathcart said.
However, the stockpiling of recyclables was still a concern for council, he said.
'The global changes to the recycling market mean that the waste industry and community recycling industry need to continue to look for new markets with integrity to sell recyclable product.'
Hamilton didn't have any stockpiles, Hamilton City Council Waste Minimisation Advisor Charlotte Catmur said.
'Hamilton's recyclables are taken to Tauranga on a daily basis and the material is aggregated with other council's recyclables and sent on for sale,' Catmur said.
In April, a fire broke out at the Smart Environmental recycling plant near Thames, burning through piles of recycling waste.
There was about 1400 tonnes of unprocessed material on site at the time, Smart Environmental managing director Grahame Christian said.
Around 150 tonnes of stockpiled plastic and paper was in an outside shed, which ignited and burnt down and at least another 100 tonnes went to landfill, after being tarnished by ash and embers in the fire, he said.
Roughly, Smart Environmental had between 3000 and 4000 tonnes of recycling stockpiled at plants around the country.
'Recycling is increasing all the time and we are struggling to process it all.'
THE STOCKPILE SITUATION
On January 1, China stopped taking 24 types of waste and recycling items like plastic and paper from overseas. It was the biggest buyer of New Zealand's waste and recyclables.
It's not clear how big many of the stockpiles are, but here's an idea of how much was being sent abroad.
In the year to November 2017, China purchased almost $26 million of waste and recyclables from New Zealand, according to data from Stats NZ.
That was almost half of the $57.25 million that went overseas that year.
In 2016 we sent $21m worth of waste to China, made up of $8.2m of plastic, $3.1m of slag, and $9.7m of paper, according to Ministry for the Environment (MFE)'s figures.
Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage said she had been advised New Zealand was sending 15 million kilograms of plastic material to facilities in China per year.
WasteMINZ chief executive Paul Evans said MFE had been in contact with recyclers to monitor stockpiles.
'There's only so long you can stockpile them for and … we have to make sure they are safe.
'Obviously, when you have large quantities of materials, they are prone to fires and the like.'
The amount of stockpile or storage space depended on the region.
In Auckland, for example, there was not much.
'Companies in Auckland are likely to be selling on, even if it is at a very low price point at the moment, just because they can't possibly stockpile. So they'll be weathering some losses.
'Where people can stockpile, they'll be doing that in the hope those markets recover in terms of pricing, so for them, it's a financial equation. They can always acquire more storage space at a cost.'
Outside Auckland, stockpile space was not yet a concern, he said.
But Christian told RNZ: 'Areas like Grey, Buller, the West Coast and also in the East and Waikato like Thames-Coromandel we received products from eight different councils and we are sitting on a very significant stockpile there.'
HOW IT GOT TO THIS:
Evans said the ban had been signalled for about a year.
'We didn't panic about it because we have been through a number of cycles of this with China … where they clamp down for a period of time to assert their authority and then they relax back.'
John Gibson, chief executive of recyclable collecting company Reclaim, told Stuff in November 2017 that the Chinese Government had not renewed its recycling company import licences, in a move dubbed the 'National Sword'.
The 'big clamp down' happened because the world was sending non-recyclable waste to China, Gibson said.
'China was effectively being used as a dumping ground.'
A document sent to the World Trade Organisation last year, outlined a ban on 24 types of waste entering China.
The document said the ban was necessary to protect its population's health and safety because dirty and hazardous waste was often mixed in with the now banned materials.
Evans said most people expected the current ban to be similar.
'However, what has happened now, they appear to be strongly signalling this is their direction for the forseeable future and they have really clamped down in terms of the volumes going into China.'
HOW BAD IS THIS?
Evans said while other markets in South East Asia existed, other countries were trying to sell into them, too.
The glut of material had pushed prices down, making the economics 'really challenging', Evans said.
It would either be a challenge for councils or recycling companies - whoever was responsible for the materials.
In the end, if it was company bearing the cost, it would mean councils would face more economically challenging recycling when negotiating the next contract, Evans said.
'So look, it's going to come and bite communities sooner or later.'
Sage said the markets for glass, cardboard and PET/HDPE plastics were holding up 'reasonably well' at this point.
'Because large volumes of recyclables from the United States and European Union are flooding the market following China's ban, commodity prices are now lower.
'Our glass, cardboard, PET and HDPE plastics processors here in New Zealand are able to manage our recycling at this point in time. New Zealand can also sell some of the PET and HDPE plastics commodities overseas.
'The recyclable materials that are most problematic right now are low quality mixed plastics and mixed paper and cardboard. There are few markets for these commodities.'
Some of the plastic and paper waste that was once sold to China was being diverted to other processing plants in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, she said.
SOLUTIONS
Evans said: 'I think it's fair to say New Zealand is a laggard with waste and recycling policy … there are absolutely measures that could be put in place that are affordable that could help to prevent this.
'We want to move forward and we want to see some of those positive interventions in place.'
But he called it a blessing in disguise - despite 'short term pain' for some.
'It's a shock like this that I believe could prompt us into some positive action.'
Sage said the country needed more onshore recycling and processing plants - and that they required sufficient supply and demand to be commercially viable.
The Government's long-term effort was focused on improving onshore processing capacity for recyclable materials, she said.
It was working with councils and waste management companies and could continue to support the development of recycling facilities through the Waste Minimisation Fund.
'We need to shift away from using nature to make stuff, using it briefly then disposing of it, either by sending it to landfill or exporting overseas …
'This is the right course of action. It will take time to develop new manufacturing plants to process recycling materials – and importantly - markets for the materials they produce.'
Cathcart said there were huge opportunities to build resilience within New Zealand rather than rely solely on international markets.
'We need circular economies where better product design and reuse is built into the system rather than relying on linear economics where the end result is wastage.'
There were a few possible solutions.
Product stewardship (including container deposit systems), an increase in waste levies or the number of landfills being levied currently, a ban on single use plastics and the operation of hand sorting rather than mechanical sorting were all viable options, he said.
Christian said: 'It's serious, we're talking to our 16 client councils and meeting as an industry with local and central government about what can we do about it.
'As a nation we don't want to stop recycling, it's about providing a national solution.'
However, a solution was still some years away, he said.
'It's going to take multi-million dollar investments and years to get the technology.
'It's super high-level, but plants in New Zealand that can receive plastic products and beneficially treat them rather than sending them away.'
For now, business will have to carry on as usual, Christian said.
'I don't foresee the Chinese National Sword programme resolving quickly.
'We are looking for markets in the Philippines, Malaysia and India.'