Waste, a huge problem

[moinsdewatt]

In the world of journalistic news, there are a lot of people who are dropped with big numbers.
Confuse millions and billion and not see the enormity of the error is very common. The error that can occur in 2 sense.

And when it is the AFP or Reuters that is wrong, it is spread everywhere since they are copied in the general media.

[to be chafoin]

55% of waste is recycled in the European Union

05/03/2019
Recycling rates increase but reuse is still low

If these figures are rather encouraging, the study nevertheless points to the low reuse of recycled products: "only 12% of the material resources used in the EU in 2016 came from recycled products and recovered materials, thus avoiding the extraction of primary raw materials, "the press release read.

https://www.linfodurable.fr/environneme ... eenne-9882

I'm trying to understand the juxtaposition of these 2 digits (rising recycling rate / resource rate from low recycling) ... That means what do we do with our recycled products? We export them? ...

[moinsdewatt]

In the United States, hundreds of cities, crumbling under their garbage, do not recycle
Since China decided to stop importing waste, the United States is faced with the problem of managing its detritus.

28 March 2019 LeMonde

Is the US recycling network crumbling? In Philadelphia, the recyclable waste of half of the inhabitants - they are 1,5 million - are now incinerated. The cans, bottles and newspapers that accumulate in the recycling bins at Memphis International Airport end up in a landfill. And the city of Deltona, Florida, recently suspended its municipal recycling program, reported the New York Times in mid-March.

Since China, until then the number one destination of American waste - and not only - has chosen to no longer be the "garbage can of the world", hundreds of municipalities across the United States are discovering what it is. cost to consume, and therefore produce tons of waste. And are forced to reinvent the management of their waste.


18 July 2017, Beijing notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) that it would ban the entry into its territory to twenty-four categories of waste - plastics, paper and textiles - solid. To justify this change, the Chinese authorities have put forward the environmental argument and the need to develop their own recycling industry. The measure came into force late 2017 and in November 2018, Beijing announced that thirty-two new products, ranging from scrap stainless steel to wood through auto parts and ships, would be added to the list of those already banned.

Between 1992 and 2017, China and Hong Kong have imported 72,4% of all plastic waste destined for recycling, according to a study published in Science Advances. Every day, 4 000 recyclable plastic containers were shipped from the United States to China. But between January and October 2018, plastic waste, paper and metal imported by Beijing decreased by 51,5% compared to the first ten months of 2017, say Chinese customs figures quoted by the official agency China New.

Incinerate rather than sort
As a result, the sorting of paper, plastics, metal and glass, as well as the search for markets for these products, are now proving too expensive for many US municipalities. Even for the largest city in Pennsylvania, whose residents produce 400 tons of recyclable waste a day.

When they were recycled, the city of Philadelphia was making money: in 2012, Republic Services, one of the giants of the sector management, was paying 67,35 dollars (about 60 euros) to the city for processing a tons of waste. But after the decision of the Chinese authorities, the situation has changed. In the summer of 2018, when Republic Services renegotiated the contract, the company planned to charge 170 dollars for recycling a ton of waste.

Too expensive for the city, which decided to use the services of a competitor, Waste Management. But it is able to process only half of municipal garbage, for 78 dollars per ton. The rest is incinerated by Covanta Energy, another player in the waste and incineration sector. "Most of us think that recycling is a service offered by our city, but it's actually a business," recalls Earther.

Small towns like Broadway in Virginia, Blaine County in Idaho or Franklin in New Hampshire are not spared. In 2010, Franklin (8 600 inhabitants) launched a recycling program that did not weigh on his finances, says The Atlantic: a ton of recycled waste brought him 6 dollars, which was enough to amortize the sorting service. But since the change of policy in China, she has to pay 125 dollars to recycle a ton of waste, or 68 dollars to incinerate it. With 18,4% of its population below the poverty line, the municipality is not raised taxes to finance recycling: it also chose the solution of incineration, bad for the air quality.

When they do not use incineration or sorting, municipalities are forced to open dumps. These are the third source of methane emissions of human origin in the United States: they represent about 14,1% of these emissions in 2016, according to figures from the Environment Agency (EPA).

Alternative solutions
"China has given the industry too little time to adapt," says Adina Renee Adler of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, one of the leading professional federations in the recycling sector. "We will soon have so much inventory that we will have to put more and more in landfills if we do not find new markets," said Darrell Smith, president of the National Waste and Recycling Association.

American cities can not bet on other countries importing waste. Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand or India are unable to absorb the tens of millions of tonnes that China imported. And when these countries agree to import some of them, they impose drastic specifications.

So what to do? Working upstream to reduce the use of plastic seems one of the only solutions, as Slate recalls: "The sooner we accept that recycling is economically impracticable, the sooner we can make progress in solving the problem of plastic pollution. Said Jan Dell, the director of Last Beach Cleanup.

Municipalities like San Francisco are also trying to change attitudes. In addition to reducing their consumption, reuse and recycling, the city encourages its residents to refuse to consume. A gamble far from being won in the middle of the Silicon Valley, and while the US economy is running at full speed and producing more waste than ever before: in 2015, the last year for which national data are available, the United States has produces 262,4 million tonnes of waste, which is 4,5% more than 2010 and 60% more than 1985.

https://mobile.lemonde.fr/big-browser/a ... oogle.com/

[moinsdewatt]

The highest mountain of waste in New Delhi is expected to exceed the height of the Taj Mahal next year, according to Indian authorities. Stupid and bad for the health of the inhabitants of the district, the Ghazipur landfill seems to know an endless growth, in the capital considered by the UN as the most polluted in the world

video (1mn): https://www.boursorama.com/videos/actua ... a068a125bb

......
The discharge was opened in 1984 and reached saturation in 2002 when it should have been closed. But every day hundreds of trucks have continued to bring trash. It now covers a large area like more than 40 football fields. "About 2000 tons of garbage cans are unloaded every day in Ghazipur," said an official of the Delhi Municipality on condition of anonymity.
In 2018, heavy rainfall caused the collapse of part of the hill, killing two people. After these deaths, the new unloadings were banned. But the measure only lasted a few days, as the authorities could not find another place to put the waste. According to a recent study, the Ghazipur landfill poses a health risk for people living up to five kilometers around, who already live in one of the most polluted cities in the world.
.......

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/new-d ... l-20190604

[jean.caissepas]

As long as such behaviors continue, we'll be in shit!

https://9gag.com/gag/aZLX9yW

https://9gag.com/gag/a4QgOXy

[Janic]

As long as such behaviors continue, we'll be in shit!

not only it is not about to stop, but on the contrary can only amplify. Shit, it is more easily recyclable!

"God laughs at men who deplore the effects of which they cherish the causes. »

[moinsdewatt]

Indonesia refers to the United States five waste containers
The containers had to contain paper waste but they were actually filled with bottles, plastic waste and diapers.

16th June 2019
.........

https://m.huffingtonpost.fr/entry/lindo ... try_recirc

[moinsdewatt]

Italy: garbage cans overflow in Rome

Updated 06 / 07 / 2019

The capital of Italy known for its postcard decor is at the heart of an unprecedented phenomenon. Rome no longer knows where to put its waste.

In Rome (Italy), the overflowing trash cans are as eye-catching as the monuments. Waste collection in the city is so badly damaged that citizens no longer know where to store their waste. In both popular and residential areas, the situation has been the same for several weeks. The three million Romans are invited to keep the trash in their homes. With the temperature close to 35 ° C, the smells are painful. "Organic residues. With the temperature rising, it gets worse," laments Ricardo Manini, a resident of the 4th district of Rome.

Social networks looking for the dirtiest neighborhood
A digital competition is in full swing on the web. On social networks, Internet users seek to find the dirtiest neighborhood by posting photos of the various overloaded garbage cans. The waste collection staff are not on strike, however, they do not have places to deal with the garbage. One of the city's two incineration plants burned down this winter. The solution would be to build new incinerators, but neither the city of Rome nor the state have the necessary budgets.

https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiW2 ... id=FR%3Afr

[Grelinette]

Italy: garbage cans overflow in Rome

Updated 06 / 07 / 2019

The capital of Italy known for its postcard decor is at the heart of an unprecedented phenomenon. Rome no longer knows where to put its waste.

In Rome (Italy), the overflowing trash cans are as eye-catching as the monuments. Waste collection in the city is so badly damaged that citizens no longer know where to store their waste. In both popular and residential areas, the situation has been the same for several weeks. The three million Romans are invited to keep the trash in their homes. With the temperature close to 35 ° C, the smells are painful. "Organic residues. With the temperature rising, it gets worse," laments Ricardo Manini, a resident of the 4th district of Rome.

...

Moscow, New Delhi, Rome, Beijing, Riyadh, ... we watch all these cities arrive one after the other at the point of saturation of their waste, not to mention air pollution, but we don't have to the spirit that our cities will inevitably experience the same phenomenon sooner or later.
https://bonheuretsante.fr/classement-20 ... le-france/

Infographie_Pollution-min.jpg (78.44 KiB) Consulted 4715 times

The reduction and treatment of waste is a subject that appeals to everyone but which remains for the moment very secondary for most of us: it is our habit, easy and simple, to fill our household trash cans and drop them around the corner.
As it says in the article: we even end up competing to find the dirtiest neighborhood!

The rare citizens who adopt "zero waste" are marginalized, as were those who advocated organic 30 years ago.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%A9ro_d%C3%A9chet


Difficult to say how and where to tackle this galloping scourge:

- on the one hand, manufacturers continue to produce and sell superfluous and non-degradable and polluting packaging, plastics for everything and anything,

- on the other, consumers (individuals and businesses) buy without worrying about overloaded products in packaging and plastics, not to mention all these fleeting and polluting products which abound in our societies.

Even Selective Sorting is becoming obsolete: more and more containers dedicated to selective sorting are overflowing, which means that previously sorted waste is thrown into unplanned containers.

Waste is a link in collapsology!

[jean.caissepas]

Indonesia refers to the United States five waste containers
The containers had to contain paper waste but they were actually filled with bottles, plastic waste and diapers.

16th June 2019
.........

We can understand them!