When you think of recycling,
you probably think of a magical process
where you throw your plastic in the blue bin,
and a unicorn takes it away, and then nine months later
you get a beautiful new baby water bottle.
-(laughter) -But the truth is,
much like making an actual baby, the recycling process
is much messier than what you may believe.
NEWSWOMAN: When most of us put out our recycling
on trash day, recyclers sort through it,
bundle it up and ship it overseas to be recycled.
For decades, much of that waste was sold to China.
NEWSMAN: America's main export to China by volume was trash:
recycled metal, cardboard and plastic.
For decades, China's been a global dustbin,
taking huge quantities of our rubbish and recycling it.
NEWSWOMAN: The relationship was symbiotic.
China would ship goods to the U.S.
The U.S. would use the empty ships
to send China recycling.
China would then use the recycling
to make new goods to ship to the U.S.,
and the cycle continued.
Yep. From China to America
and then back to China and then to America again.
Basically, it's... ♪ The circle of trash ♪
♪ Paper, plastic into paper, ah, paper ♪
♪ Plastic into paper ♪
♪ Ah, paper, plastic into paper. ♪
(applause)
Yeah. Believe it or not, America creates so much trash
that it's had to send it over to China to be recycled.
Which isn't really surprising when you think about it.
Like, nobody is better at creating unnecessary trash
than America. I mean, this is the same country
where you can buy orange slices in a plastic container.
Yeah. As if there wasn't already a container for orange slices
-called an orange. -(laughter)
It's in the container.
And for a very long time, the relationship worked.
Right? America sent China its recycling.
China turned it into fake Louis Vuitton bags.
But then... just like your ex,
after a while China decided it was sick of taking trash.
NEWSWOMAN: By 2012, China was receiving
nearly half of all the recycling
that Americans shipped out of the country.
A lot of those materials could not be recycled.
They were ending up in landfills,
the environment or, worse, taking a human toll.
Now the country is trying to clean up its image.
In January, China stopped taking
most of the dirty recycling it called "foreign garbage,"
which means some seven million tons of plastic
needs to be recycled elsewhere.
Yep. You see, back when China was a poorer country,
they were fine with sorting through America's recycling.
But now that they're more rich and more powerful,
they've decided that that's beneath them.
Which is understandable, right?
You start making some money, you upgrade your life.
It's like when you get a big promotion, you know,
so you start buying the super soft toilet paper, yeah,
instead of using napkins you stole from Burger King.
You know what I mean.
You know when you lay them together
and you make sure the corners overlap--
We've all done that, come on.
So with China no longer taking America's plastic,
all the recycling has had to find somewhere else to go.
And for a while, there were a lot of countries in Asia
that were willing to take it,
in fact, they were happy to take it.
TV REPORTER: This used to be mostly paddy fields,
but rubbish, which has been dumped here
for almost 40 years, dominates the landscape.
Villagers here don't mind.
In fact, they welcome it.
Like many others, Giman makes a living
from sorting through the waste.
TRANSLATOR: This used to be a poor area.
I couldn't even afford to go to school.
But with this trash,
I could put my three children through school.
My oldest is getting a PhD.
(audience reacts)
That's insane, right?
Like, that is... one of the craziest things ever.
This guy managed to get his kids a degree from trash,
which is ironic, because that trash probably contained
a few actual degrees.
And his story wasn't the only one.
Many people around Asia were making money
by sorting through America's recycling, all right,
which isn't a great job,
but, for many people, it changed their lives.
But as we said earlier, America uses a lot of plastic.
And after China closed its doors,
many of these smaller countries couldn't handle
the volume of plastic recycling
that was coming into their country.
It turned it from a blessing into a curse,
which is always the case with plastic,
let's be honest, right?
Whether it's plastic recycling or plastic surgery,
a little bit is okay.
Yeah? Yeah. But if you do too much,
you look like you're always watching the end
of an M. Night Shyamalan movie.
Just like, "What? They're allergic to water?!"
(laughter)
So, just like China, all these other countries have decided
that they've had enough of Western trash.
"We don't want your recyclable trash,"
that is the message from Cambodia.
That country just sent back 83 shipping containers filled
with 1,600 tons of plastic waste
back to the U.S. and Canada, saying,
"Cambodia is not a dustbin
where foreign countries can dispose of waste.”
TV REPORTER: Countries like the Philippines say
it's Western waste littering their shores,
sent to poorer countries instead of being recycled.
TV REPORTER: The president of the Philippines,
Rodrigo Duterte even made it very clear to Canada
that the trash was not welcome, to send it back to Canada.
-Your garbage is, uh, -On the way.
on, uh, on-on the way.
Prepare a grand reception.
Eat it if you want to.
(laughter)
Oh, wow!
-Wow. -(cheers and applause)
Rodrigo Duterte does not mess around.
Prepare a grand reception for your trash
and eat it if you want to?
It's a slam, but it's such a weirdly formal way
to tell someone to shove it up their ass.
Like... No. Like, I'd love to hear Duterte deliver
a "yo mama" joke.
He's just like, "Your mother has overindulged so much
"that the government recently bestowed upon her
her own area code. Slam."
(laughter)
So, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philippines, China,
all of them have come together to say,
it is time for America's trash to go home.
In other words: send it back.
Send it back.
So, now, the trash is headed back here to the U.S.
And you might be saying, "Well, fine, Trevor,
We'll just have to recycle it ourselves."
Well, unfortunately, it's not that easy.
TV REPORTER: So what happens now
to the plastic we used to ship to China?
Not much.
A lot of it's just piling up here in the states.
A lot of plastic comes to recyclers like Bagaria
all mixed together,
impossible to separate cost-effectively.
Cities across the country are now reexamining
whether their recycling programs are going to waste.
TV REPORTER: Is it better for people to recycle wrong
or not at all?
It's better for people not to recycle at all.
It sounds crazy, but you have to put it in context.
Okay, when it comes to, like, tin cans,
like all of that stuff, you can still recycle it.
But when it comes to plastic, incorrect recycling
is worse than no recycling at all.
And even though you might think, "No, I recycle correctly,"
that chances are that you're not.
Like, we all think we're recycling when we put
a plastic bottle in the little blue plastic bin.
But what we're actually supposed to be doing
is taking the lid off the bottle,
and then you're supposed to take that little ring off
that's under the lid of every single bottle.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and if you get takeout,
you can't just throw that in the bin and call it a day,
even just rinsing it off isn't good enough.
You're supposed to wash that thing, like, make it clean,
like, cleaner than Mike Pence's browser history.
Just everything.
Yeah, his shit is-- Are you kidding?
He's like, "I won't even type 'Google,'
'cause it sounds like a sex thing."
(laughter)
And now-- I know, when I say these things,
you might be thinking, "Dude, I love this planet,
but those plastic rings, that's too much."
Well, then there's one other thing we could be doing,
and that is using less plastic,
which I know is hard, because we've all gotten used to it.
Like, I'm obsessed with it, we all use it, it's convenient.
But we're gonna need to try.
I've actually thought of a few solutions
for all of us, you know.
Yeah, no. Instead of plastic plates,
I was thinking we can just use our iPads.
Okay? Think about it.
It's flat, it's big, and as an added bonus,
when you watch Netflix during dinner,
you don't even have to look up, yeah.
You can just be like, "Oh, no. They killed Eleven.
"Ah! Oh, no, that's-that's just Bolognese.
Mmm. Oh, yeah, she's fine."
Working it for everything.
Yeah. As for all those delivery containers
that you get from, like, Postmates,
now, that's something you don't need.
Just have the delivery guy put all your food in his mouth,
and then he feeds it to you like a baby bird
when he arrives.
You'll be helping the planet,
and you'll make a really close friend.
Yeah. So, the next time,
the next time you plan on tossing out a piece of plastic
that you used for, like, a total of three seconds,
just remember that pretty soon that plastic
may be headed back your way.
So if you don't know, now you know.