- Plastics are treated as a product
that miraculously appears from nowhere
and it goes to nowhere.
It starts when the oil and the gas leave the well head.
And it keeps on being a problem
at every stage along the way.
Why is it that we're seeing so much more plastics
entering the environment?
This is the story of plastics.
We got into recycling
because we thought it was the right thing to do.
Of course, it is a disposal service.
At its core, it's taking stuff
that people don't want anymore
and trying to do something better than landfill with it.
In 2013, under significant pressure from our city council,
we began accepting non-bottle mixed rigid plastic,
so all the plastic containers, berry containers, keg cups,
plastic cold cups from Starbucks.
Procter and Gamble wants us all to believe
that all their packaged goods
are in totally environmentally sound packaging.
They want us all using single-use, packaged products
so that we're just on the supply chain.
It's totally unfair to the cities
and the recyclers on the back end
because then everyone says, oh it's recyclable.
It's recycle ready.
You should collect it.
Well then what?
- The United States was shipping
over 50% of its plastics and its papers to China.
The situation was very similar in Europe.
We're just shipping it all to China.
China will deal with it.
And we built up these big recycling programs,
and everything was about recycle.
Recycle, recycle, recycle is the solution to everything
because we had China there.
So China's just said, you know what.
We're sick of being a dumping ground,
and we don't want this stuff introduced into our country.
I see the China thing as a reckoning
because it's all been this false market,
where we've just been shipping stuff to China.
This is, in my 25-year career, this is the biggest
recycling crisis globally that we have ever seen.
- At the same time, the tons are going up and up and up.
The price is going down and down and down and down
to the point where now, it's costing us 50 bucks a ton
to get rid of.
If you think we're just gonna take it from China
and ship it to Thailand or Indonesia or Vietnam,
where's it gonna go?
- When the government shut down the recycling center,
most people shipped to more remote or hidden villages
or other countries.
- From U.S.
This Nestle from U.K.
Yeah, it's from Australia.
This came from Toronto.
Dunkin' Donuts.
This from Oregon.
From New Zealand.
Tijuana.
(speaks in foreign language)