The effects of China’s refusal to accept global waste
by Sammy Greenwald on Feb 06, 2018
As 2018 quickly reached us, so did China’s refusal to continue being the world’s landfill. January 1st came and went and worldwide, governments were not prepared for the effects this decision would have. China had been responsible for processing more than half of the world’s exported waste. Places like Calgary in Canada sent almost 100% of their recyclables to China and had no backup plan in place. Currently local governments are storing waste in trailers, warehouses, literally any available spot that can be found…. obviously, these are not sustainable solutions.
We’re proud to be one of the companies that is actually working to solve this problem instead of avoiding a solution. Sea2See is responsible for collecting about 1 ton of waste every day but this doesn’t even make a dent worldwide. With a surplus of waste with nowhere to go, countries will be forced to come up with very innovative solutions. For example, VolkerWessels, a Dutch company, is planning to collect ocean waste to build highways in Rotterdam. This is an ingenious idea that will put to use enormous amounts of waste and can easily be replicated all over the world.
Sustainable fashion, construction, and much more are now the ways of the future and every industry needs to join in the search for coming up with sustainable ways to dispose of waste. With forward thinking like this, there is hope that the world can work together and come up with ways to avert this crisis.
