Not so long ago, China processed 40 per cent of United States recyclables. However, in 2018 China decided to stop importing a lot of this garbage. This decision left U.S. cities with big mountains of recyclables to process. So now in many cases, they are just burning them.

The case of Chester, Philadelphia

In the past three months, fear has risen in cities like Chester about pollution coming from incinerators. The government declares that half of the city recyclables have been loaded on to trucks, taken to a hulking incineration facility and burned.

Population living near industries and dumping sites are more vulnerable to toxic pollution. About 200 tons of recycling material is sent to a huge Covanta incinerator in Chester City every day since Cina’s import ban came into practice last year. Moreover, most of the trash and recyclables burned is imported, sometimes from places far away like New York City or North Carolina.

The population is already suffering the consequences

” There are higher than normal rates of heart disease, stroke and asthma in Chester,” public health advocate Marilyn Howarth told The Guardian, “which are all endpoints for poor air.”

“It is difficult to link any single case of cancer, heart disease, or asthma directly to a particular source” Howarth added. “However, the emissions from Covanta contain known carcinogens so they absolutely increase the risk of cancer to area residents.”

Recycling Fraud

The dangerous scam is that people want to do the right thing by recycling but they have no idea where it goes and who it impacts. “The unfortunate thing in the United States is that when people recycle they think it’s taken care of when it was largely taken care of by China,” Paul Gilman, Covanta’s chief sustainability officer, told The Guardian. “When that stopped, it became clear we just aren’t able to deal with it.”

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