Waste management

Anti-dumping

The latest crackdown on foreign rubbish will disrupt the global garbage trade

CHINA dominates international trade in many goods, but few more than waste for recycling. It sucked in more than half the world's exports of scrap copper and waste paper in 2016, and half of its used plastic. All in all, China spent over $18bn on imports of rubbish last year. America, meanwhile, is an eager supplier. In 2016 nearly a quarter of America's biggest exporters by volume were recyclers of paper, plastic or metal. Topping the list was America Chung Nam, a California-based supplier of waste paper which last year exported a whopping[1] 333,900 containers, almost all of them to China.

[1]whopping: If you describe an amount as whopping, you are emphasizing that it is large.异常大的;庞大的

Planned spending amounts to a whopping $31.4 billion.

预计的开支高达314亿美元。

This may soon change. On July 18th China told the World Trade Organisation that by the end of the year, it will no longer accept imports of 24 categories of solid waste as part of a government campaign against yang laji or "foreign garbage". The Ministry of Environmental Protection says restricting such imports will protect the environment and improve public health. But the proposed import ban will disrupt billions of dollars in trade. Recyclers worry that other categories of waste may soon receive the same treatment.

Imports of rubbish have helped feed China's voracious[2] appetite for raw materials. It is often cheaper to recycle scrap copper, iron and steel, as well as waste paper and plastic, than to make such materials from scratch[3], especially when commodity prices are high. So as commodity prices rose during the 2000s, the burgeoning[4] trade in waste benefited both exporters, who made money from previously worthless trash, and importers, who gained access to a reliable stream of precious feedstock.Between 1995 and 2016 Chinese imports of waste grew tenfold, from 4.5m to 45m tonnes.

[2]voracious:If you describe a person, or their appetite for something, as voracious, you mean that they want a lot of something.  贪吃的;狼吞虎咽的;贪婪的;渴求的

Joseph Smith was a voracious book collector.

约瑟夫·史密斯是个如饥似渴的藏书家。

[3]from scratch: If you do something from scratch, you do it without making use of anything that has been done before. 从零开始;从头做起;白手起家  

Hong Kong's manufacturing industry did not start from scratch in the post-war period.

战后，香港制造业的兴起并非从零开始。

[4]burgeoning: developing quickly 迅速发展 

The company hoped to profit from the burgeoning communications industry. 

公司希望能从飞速发展的通讯业中获利。

But imports of recyclable waste are often dirty, poorly sorted or contaminated with hazardous substances such as lead or mercury. In 1996 factories in Xinjiang inadvertently imported more than 100 tonnes of radioactive metal from Kazakhstan. The following year an American businessman was convicted of smuggling over 200 tonnes of unsorted rubbish labelled as waste paper. Even when the intended material is imported, it is often recycled improperly. In 2002 the authorities faced widespread criticism after a documentary showed workers in Guangdong province crudely dismantling[5] discarded electronic devices and dumping the toxic remains into a river. Officials may have been spurred into the latest restrictions by the release of Plastic China, an unflattering[6] documentary about the plastic-recycling industry which was screened at Sundance[7], a grand Americanfifilm festival, in January.

[5]dismantle: to take a machine apart or to come apart into separate pieces 拆开，拆卸

He asked for immediate help from the United States to dismantle the warheads.

他请求美国立即提供援助，拆除这批弹头。

[6]unflattering: If you describe something as unflattering, you mean that it makes a person or thing seem less attractive than they really are. 贬低的；有损形象的

an unflattering photo/dress/colour

难看的照片／衣服／颜色

[7]Sundance Film Festival: The Sundance Film Festival, a program of the Sundance Institute, is an American film festival that takes place annually in Park City, Utah. With over 46,660 attendees in 2016, it is the largest independent film festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers.

圣丹斯电影节（Sundance Film Festival，又译日舞影展），为独立制片电影节之一。由著名导演、演员罗伯特·雷德福于1984年创办，专为独立电影人和影片而设。（官网http://t.cn/RycYUaN）

The government had already been campaigning to block imports of illegal and low-quality waste under a crackdown called Operation Green Fence[8] launched in 2013. Customs officials have ramped up[9] inspections of scrap metal for circuit boards, plastic for syringes and other medical waste, and waste paper for plastic or wood. Since then, China's imports of waste have fallen sharply (see chart).

[8]Operation Green Fence: a policy designed to more fully inspect incoming secondary commodities, including scrap, with a goal of prohibiting the import of unwashed and contaminated material entering China. Operation Green Fence is often cited as a key factor in the current problems facing the scrap market.（更多内容http://t.cn/R9TNL4C）

[9]ramp up: to increase the speed, power, or cost of something 加快（速度）;增加（威力）;提高（费用）

Mitsubishi has ramped up the speed of its new micro-controllers. 

三菱公司已经提高了其新生产的微控制器的运行速度。

Whereas Green Fence was aimed at improving the quality of imported waste, the government's latest move bans several types of waste outright, threatening some $5bn in trade. The Ministry of Environmental Protection says the ban will cut pollution. But most of the waste consumed by China's recycling industry comes from domestic sources, not imports, notes Joshua Goldstein of the University of Southern California: "This is not really where the problem lies." Indeed, recyclers who rely on imports may now switch to domestic stock.

"This is going to be very hard on our industry," says Adina Renee Adler of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. As it is, Operation Green Fence has put lots of small recyclers out of business. Exporters will suffer too. Derek Kellenberg of the 

University of Montana says, "My suspicion is that the lower-quality stuff is more likely to end up in a landfill."