For decades, China has been buying the world’s trash and recycling it, but last year decided to bring that process to a halt. Under China’s new National Sword policy, several types of plastic scrap are no longer allowed into the country, which means it’s an open question where it’s all going to end up.

A new study published in the journal Science gives us an idea of the scale of the problem. According to the study, China’s new policy means that the rest of the world will have to find a way to deal with an additional 122 million tons of trash by 2030, assuming production doesn't slow down.

China has imported around 45 percent of the world’s plastic trash since they began the program in 1992. The U.S. alone exports around 4,000 shipping containers full of plastic to China every day, and now the U.S. and other countries need to find some other way of dealing with their garbage.

Already, that extra plastic waste is ending up in landfills, but this is perhaps one of the worst ways to handle the problem. Ideally, over the next few years the rest of the world starts building the kind of industrial recycling facilities that China has spent the last few decades operating, but it’s an open question how long it takes before those facilities are up and running.

The other option is that the U.S. and similar countries just do nothing, which means their excess plastic ends up in landfills and clogs the oceans. Hopefully it doesn't come to that because the situation is already bad enough as it is.

Source: Science

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