Waste export

The UK exports plastic waste to other countries, and the Malaysia is currently the importer of British plastic waste. China used to be the world’s biggest importer of plastic waste; however, following Beijing’s decision to close its borders last year, the amount of UK plastic waste imported into China fell 97 per cent. The major reason that why the UK exports so much plastic waste to other countries is the UK does not have sufficient recycling infrastructure to process it domestically, though the UK government is keeping encouraging people to put their plastic waste into recycle bins.

It might be more and more common to see countries are trading their waste. Some countries in the future might be even specialised at processing recyclable waste. This is related to the issue of efficiency. Processing recyclable waste requires certain technology, investment and infrastructure building. It is impossible to deny the importance of processing recyclable waste, given it has been more and more urgent to improve the global environment. However, not every country is possible to cut their waste and emission, because countries need some early stage industries which usually produce high levels of pollutions to generate some initial incomes to generate future growth of their economies as well as societies. This comes to a problem if these countries which produce high levels of pollution can afford exporting their waste and pollution to the countries which are specialised at processing waste. This means the countries which choose to be specialised at processing waste should be the developing countries in order to make recycling waste process more affordable, and this does have positive externalities and should be encouraged.

To conclude, it might be a good path for some developing countries to be specialised at processing recycling waste and pollution, as this certainly has a large market, especially when people are paying more and more attention to the environment.