As Americans carefully separate the paper and plastics from their trash, most probably don’t realize that their country doesn’t recycle stuff so much as export it to be recycled elsewhere. Specifically, to China. For more than five years, scrap and trash has consistently been the US’s biggest export (paywall), for which China is the number one customer, and the market has doubled in size since 2006. 
 
 “The public doesn’t realize this, but recycling is made possible by technology and markets—they think it’s just a matter of technology,” an industry insider with expertise in China’s waste management told Quartz. “And we don’t have strong enough markets in the US.” 
 
 But hints are emerging that American cities and the companies that sell trash are in for a rude awakening. A recent sign of this comes from Oregon, where truckloads of plastic are piling up at recycling depots because Chinese buyers cancelled their orders, as Oregon Public Broadcasting reports. 
 
 And it’s not just plastic from Oregon. American waste recycling companies are starting to panic. “What I’m hearing from folks in the industry, it’s that just that nothing is going,” the industry insider says. “[China’s] not taking anything anymore. It’s a greenwall.” 
 
 What’s going on is this: the Chinese government just launched Operation Green Fence, forbidding the import of certain types of solid waste, including unwashed plastics and other illegal waste mixed in with the good stuff. This is a problem for the US because China is the primary source of demand for its to-be-recycled plastic exports (pdf): 
 
 Resource Recycling, Portland OR China’s share of US exports of plastics for recycling. PE—polyethylene; PS—polystyrene; PVC—polyvinyl chloride; PET—polyethylene terephthalate 
 
 Of course, you can’t always tell how serious a Chinese government ban will be, and it’s not even clear why China would come down so aggressively. Despite its “trash mountain” woes, it actually needs the plastic resin for manufacturing. 
 
 Regardless, Green Fence looks like the real deal. Chinese ports have turned away “foreign garbage” by the hundreds upon thousands of tons (links in Chinese). “If China customs found a syringe, even if it’s just one, in a bale of plastic, it’s considered medical waste and the whole shipment would get rejected,” Peter Wang, CEO of recycling exporter America Chung Nam said at a conference recently. 
 
 The US’s reliance on China to buy up its plastic trash has meant that it’s neglected to keep developing its own plastic recycling capacity, as you can see: 
 
 Resource Recycling, Portland OR New PE recycling plants opened by region. 
 
 The drop-off in Chinese demand, and the lack of immediately accessible alternatives, could hit American cities hard, says Quartz’s contact in the industry. “Cities are going to have a huge problem on their hands because they don’t know what to do with this stuff,” she says. “They have made commitments saying it’s recycled—but they didn’t say how or where.” 
 
 Not that the US couldn’t open new plants. But sorting trash to be recycled is labor-intensive, and therefore expensive. (The US’s failure to sort it properly is why China is turning US trash away.) And while optical sorters exist, those are expensive too. And either will raise costs for US cities. ||||| Oregon recyclers have stopped accepting certain kinds of plastic because China has stopped buying them. 
 
 Chinese recyclers are no longer buying plastic items with the numbers 3, 6 or 7 on them, and inspectors are checking for and rejecting shipments of mixed plastics from overseas. The list of plastics China no longer wants includes disposable coffee cup lids, PVC pipes, certain kinds of clamshell containers, and garden planters with flexible walls, to name a few. 
 
 The restrictions have left recycling companies across U.S. without buyers for many of the plastics they have traditionally accepted. They don’t affect curbside recycling items like milk jugs and yogurt tubs, but they are limiting which miscellaneous plastics recycling depots will accept. 
 
 Far West Fibers president Keith Ristau said 50 trucks worth of mixed plastic from his company’s recycling depots has piled up after orders from China were canceled. It will need to be re-sorted into individual types of plastic before it can be sold, as will the plastics are now being collected at recycling depots. 
 
 “We used to have just one big bin at our depots, and you threw all the plastics in there, and we just baled it and shipped it to China,” he said. “Now we have to sort it by the specific resin, so we have four or five bins instead of one.” 
 
 Far West Fibers and other Portland-area recyclers are meeting with officials at Metro next week to find new buyers for the recyclable plastics China won’t take. 
 
 Metro recycling manager Andy Sloop said there are still good markets for the kinds of plastics accepted in curbside recycling programs. 
 
 “What’s mostly at issue is low-grade, mixed, rigid plastics that aren’t supposed to go into curbside bins,” he said. “It’s things like lids and toys and swimming pools. It’s not plastic soda bottles or milk jugs.” 
 
 More From Ecotrope ||||| A Chinese ban on most foreign recycling material is leaving some Canadian municipalities with stockpiles of papers and plastics, much of which may eventually end up in the dump. 
 
 The ban is also driving down the revenues cities make off their recyclables because the competition to find a company able to take the materials is stiff. 
 
 China used to be the main recipient of the world's recyclable plastics and papers but has now stopped accepting almost all foreign materials, leaving Canadian cities in the lurch. 
 
 Although the ban didn't take full effect until Dec. 31, many Chinese companies stopped accepting foreign recycling materials months ago, leaving some cities with stockpiles of flattened cardboard and crushed plastic without anywhere to send it. 
 
 Matthew Keliher, manager of solid waste for Halifax, said three-quarters of his city's recyclables used to go to China. He said the city has found new markets for hard plastics and papers but film plastics — grocery bags and food storage bags and wraps — have proved harder to sell. 
 
 Three hundred tonnes of film plastic amassed in a Halifax warehouse since August is now being sent to the dump. 
 
 Calgary, which used to send all of its paper recyclables and half of its plastics to China, has amassed 5,000 tonnes of material over the last few months that it can't find anyone else to take. It hasn't yet decided what to do with it. 
 
 While Canada has some domestic recycling companies, Christina Seidel, executive director of the Recycling Council of Alberta, said those are almost exclusively for the high-grade plastics like milk jugs and juice bottles. 
 
 "That's a really high-quality material," she said. "Everyone wants those. There aren't huge fans of the low grade plastics." 
 
 Sixty per cent of recyclables in Quebec used to go to China. No more. 
 
 Recycling Council of Alberta executive director Christina Seidel says that while Canada has some domestic recycling companies, those are almost exclusively for high-grade plastics like milk jugs and juice bottles. (Rebecca Kelly/CBC) 
 
 Tired of tonnes of recyclables contaminated with unusable garbage arriving in its ports and intent on using up its own domestically-produced recyclables, China slammed the door shut to most foreign materials. 
 
 Indonesia, Thailand and India are among the countries still accepting foreign recyclables but competition to get them to accept product is stiff. 
 
 It's so tight that Keliher said Halifax is afraid to say where it's now sending its recyclables for fear another city will hear of it and jump in to push the competition for that outlet even higher. 
 
 "Halifax won't be disclosing the locations of any of our outlets," he said. 
 
 "The recycling market was ruthless before the Chinese ban came in and, now that half that market has dried up and the supply is just overwhelming, it's even more ruthless to get our material out." 
 
 Halifax used to make $2.1 million a year on the sale of recyclables, with $1.6 million of that coming from China. 
 
 Derek Angove, director of processing and resource management for Toronto's Solid Waste Management Services, said his city did not directly export to China. But it has now entered into longer-term contracts with Canadian outlets to protect Toronto from being crowded out when cities left in the lurch by the Chinese ban come calling with their products. 
 
 These are bales of plastic bags from cities like Halifax. (Mary-Catherine McIntosh/CBC) 
 
 He said Toronto has already seen the price it gets for paper and plastic-coated materials drop and, unless China can be convinced to re-open its doors to recyclables, he believes the prices are going to keep going down. 
 
 Seidel said Canada needs to move nationwide to the extended producer responsibility system in place across British Columbia, which puts the onus on the producers of the materials to pay for and ensure the recycling of its products. 
 
 In B.C., that has led to a larger domestic market for recyclables and less pressure on municipalities to pay for the programs.
– If your local recycler starts turning away your cans and bottles in the near future, blame China. Beijing has stopped accepting certain shipments of recycled plastic from the US, reports Quartz. (It reportedly will no longer welcome unwashed plastics and improperly sorted shipments; other reports say items like coffee cup lids and PVC pipes are on the no-no list.) This, it turns out, is a huge deal because trash has for years been one of the top American exports to China, explains the Washington Post. If China won't buy it anymore, US cities and recycling companies will be scrambling for alternatives. In fact, that's already happening, reports Oregon Public Broadcasting, which talks to one company that has 50 trucks' worth of plastic sitting around thanks to canceled China orders. One sliver of hope is that China genuinely needs this stuff for its manufacturing industry, so it's possible that business interests will pressure the government into relaxing the new "Operation Green Fence" initiative. Failing that, the US will either need to start recycling more of its own trash or find new buyers. Might we suggest Oslo?