Thread by @maggiekb1

What is now happening to all the recycling that used to go to China, before they cracked down on contamination?

TL;DR spoiler -- a whole crap ton of it is going to landfills.

There's been some really good reporting done lately about the other countries that are now buying recycling exports that used to go to China. @latimes has a great piece about the Malaysian recycling industry -- and the mess our recycling causes there.latimes.com/world/asia/la-…

But in these stories, I kept seeing charts that would show stuff like this. Malaysia and other countries are buying more American recycling. But, like, not remotely enough to make up for what used to go to China. So what about the leftover?

Turns out, if the recycling that would have previously been exported to China is not getting exported somewhere else we don't really know what happens to it. Any data on this is largely proprietary for business competition reasons.

But there's a BIG gap between The Recycling China Used to Buy and The Recycling Now Purchased by Other Countries Instead.

According to @ISRI about half of what China used to buy is not being exported now. What happens to that half? 🤷‍♀️

Where does that recycling go? I got several expert perspectives, but all orbited around the landfill. Probably also some stockpiling -- pressed into bales and stored in outbuildings/shipping containers/outside. Again no hard numbers, because this isn't publicly reportable data.

The recycling we used to sell to China was the contaminated stuff domestic recyclers wouldn't buy. Our whole recycling system grew up around expectation of having that market. It's gone. But our contamination rates have now skyrocketed from 10 years ago fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-e…