A customs officer checks solid waste in Shantou, south China's Guangdong Province, May 22, 2018. Customs officers and police in Guangdong Province have jointly uncovered a smuggling case involving over 200,000 tonnes of solid waste. China has banned 24 categories of solid waste imports since the end of 2017. (Xinhua/Yuan Guohong)
SAN FRANCISCO, May 29 (Xinhua) -- A county in the western U.S. state of Oregon will suspend recycling services starting on June 1, after China announced in July last year a ban on imports of hazardous waste materials from foreign countries, an online report said Tuesday.
The landfill and 11 transfer stations of Douglas County in southwestern Oregon will stop accepting plastics, glass and various paper materials, with only one transfer station agreeing to accept some metals, such as tin and aluminum, according to the report of the westdive.com website that focuses on the waste industry of America.
Douglas County attributed the suspension to China's tighter recyclable material import policies and the resulting inability to find alternative markets.
The report said fiber is the main category taking a hit of the Chinese ban on contaminated solid wastes, as areas in the states of Oregon, Idaho and Massachusetts are among the many that ended collection of certain types of fiber, such as newspaper, shredded paper, beverage cartons and egg cartons.
Oregon, Washington and other states in the western United States have been badly affected by China's ban on foreign waste materials, because huge portions of their collected recyclables were sent to China for processing.
The report said the effects of China's stricter policy toward scrap materials "are felt throughout the entire recycling industry, but particularly in areas of closer proximity to China that in the past have had an easier time shipping material there."
As China and other Asian countries including Vietnam, which were previous destinations of wastes from Western countries such as the United States, are getting tougher on imports of scrap materials, more U.S. cities and counties struggling to find homes for their collected materials could adopt a similar policy of suspensions of recycling services in the short-term, said the report.
