The success of Sundance and other film festivals means that a film cannot change the world. But the documentary China Plastics – opening the eyes of many of its inhabitants by breaking the ban on seeing it on the internet – has managed to hasten the Beijing authorities. The film uncovers the gravity of imported plastics for recycling from around the world, which damage the health of the people of China and the lands, winds and waters they need to live in.

China has been the world’s leading recyclable waste factory and warehouse for more than 20 years. In 2016, 56 percent of the plastic, paper and metal waste that was exported to the entire planet went to China. That same year, the United States sent 16 billion tons in exchange for $5.2 billion. Canadian cities were sending them most of their recyclable waste.

Almost the same as in Europe. The head of the British recycling companies has admitted to journalists that “for 20 years we have adapted ourselves exporting recyclable plastics to China and now we don’t know what’s going to happen.” Ireland has warned that its waste batteries will soon reach “crisis levels”, as 95% of plastics were shipped to China.

According to the Pacific Standard journal “How China Can Disrupt Global Recycling Markets”, the US, Japan and Germany are the biggest exporters that ship their waste to China. It is followed by Great Britain and Malaysia, followed by Spain and France. It is therefore to be hoped that the waves of the rhinestones launched by China in the water will reach the Basque Country.

By 2008, China was looking forward to raw materials for its manufacturing, construction and infrastructure industries. The shortage of materials and the overload of working people, the recycling of paper and plastic, such as metals, is still cheaper than the production of raw materials.

In return, rich countries find it cheaper to sell their recyclable waste to China, than to their hunger, to treat them in casa.Un a prominent example is that of electric motors. Recyclers from Europe or North America found it too expensive to open their houses and separate internal materials manually. China started buying in the '90s these useless motors that were built up in the warehouses.

During these years, and even today, China has bought in the West anything that could take advantage of it. In order to understand the traffic in waste, the key is economic transport. Ships, which transport all kinds of products to Western ports, usually return to China loaded with waste. As far as plastics are concerned, manufacturing, located mainly in the vicinity of large ports, needs a lot of plastic that is not manufactured in them, which is why it buys products of remote origin at a good price.

Last July, at the World Transport Organisation (WTO) Conference, the representatives of Beijing clearly warned: “The waste we bring to use as a raw material brings mixed waste and also hazardous waste. And they seriously pollute China’s environment.” Now on 1 January we will have to begin to understand the warning of 24 types of waste banned in the West, albeit reluctantly.

Global factory and global landfill

The Chinese authorities were trying to put an order on the imports of recyclables since 2013, when the ‘Green Barrier’ operation was launched. They have reasons. To start with, recycling remotely is not as profitable a business as it was at first, in these years the workforce has become more expensive with the enrichment and increase of the country’s wages.

On the other hand, with the excuse of bringing waste that serves as a raw material, international garbage trafficking has brought China a great deal of recyclable waste to be deposited, buried or burned in any corner. Images from China Plastics show the extent to which fields and streams in rural areas have become polluting warehouses for remote garbage, poisoning the lives of its inhabitants. The film also shows the harsh lives of adults and children who lose their health in manual recycling.

And what are the waste exporters going to do? At the beginning of the year, many leaders in Europe and the United States did not know how to react to the crisis in Ukraine. As the British Environment Minister, Michael Gove, acknowledged, “I don’t know what the consequences it will bring, I recognize it clearly.” It seems like a patch for those who are filled with plastic is shipping to countries with even lighter controls than China: Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand.

It will not be enough for those who consume more and more plastic. Authorities and industrialists who have invested very little time in recycling infrastructure will have to react. And they will have to try to adapt the recycling systems here to the new standards set by China: if so far it accepted 1.5% pollution in recyclable plastics, it has lowered the limit to 0.5%, and will not accept more dirty. Will those of us who call recycling anything at all learn in time the importance of the good quality of selective waste collection?

However, those responsible for the #breakfreefromplastic campaign have warned that the West could use even more incineration: “It would be a question of adding a new pollution problem to the waste problem by emitting greenhouse gases and dioxins that produce cancers.”

The International Incineration Movement has pointed out that recycling is not enough, that we have to learn from the plastic waste crisis: “The pollution we live has no other way to produce and consume less plastics to get out of the crisis.” But the industry is not there. It has recently been known that in recent years the petrochemical industry has invested EUR 146 billion to increase plastic production by 40% over the next decade. Someone will suffer.

The documentary China Plastics has some memorable passages. In one of them you hear the pattern of a recycling factory and another citizen discussing: “Why do other countries come to bury their garbage in China?” “Because they cannot correctly classify their residue.” “Please... Can they produce nuclear weapons and can't classify the waste? This sent to us is harmful, it can also be toxic. Who cares about the harm done to others while giving benefits?”