Speaker 1: So I picked up a Tesco plastic bag, um some
Speaker 1: some clear soft plastic that was wrapped around a bit
Speaker 1: of lettuce and a Lentil puff wrapper, and I glued
Speaker 1: or taped tiny digital trackers into each of them, and
Speaker 1: I deposited them at three different Tesco stores in London.
Speaker 1: And then I spent the next two weeks glued to
Speaker 1: my phone from Bloomberg News and I heard radio it's
Speaker 1: the big take. I'm West Coastsova Tidday. You know that
Speaker 1: plastic bag which she tossed into the recycling then what
Speaker 1: really happens to that thing? Like a lot of people,
Speaker 1: I try to do my part by recycling, but I
Speaker 1: always do wonder how much, if any of that plastic
Speaker 1: I dutifully placed at the curb each week he has
Speaker 1: ever really turned into something else. The good news is
Speaker 1: today's show answers that question. The bad news you are
Speaker 1: not going to like the answer. No one voted for
Speaker 1: more plastic in our lives, but we are buried in
Speaker 1: plastic because it's cheap. That's Judith inc. She's a former
Speaker 1: administrator with the US Environmental Protection Agency and now she's
Speaker 1: president of Beyond Plastics. That's a group in Vermont that
Speaker 1: advocates for less plastic waste. Plastic production will double in
Speaker 1: the next twenty years, and at the same time, plastic
Speaker 1: recycling has been an abysmal failure. I asked Judith for
Speaker 1: a quick explainer on why that is. Plastics traditionally have
Speaker 1: been made from chemicals and oil, but now it's mostly
Speaker 1: made from chemicals and ethane, which is a waste product
Speaker 1: of gas hydrofracking. So what once was a waste that
Speaker 1: was flared in to the atmosphere is now in a
Speaker 1: few instances, being captured and sent by pipeline two new
Speaker 1: gigantic plastic production facilities with the funny name of ethane crackers.
Speaker 1: So the gas is heated at a really high temperature
Speaker 1: and cracked, and then billions of little plastic pellets are
Speaker 1: created that's then used to make single use plastic packaging.
Speaker 1: Everyone should keep recycling paper, metal, glass, and only plastic
Speaker 1: that has the little tiny number on the bottom, number
Speaker 1: one or number two. Those are resin codes. But most
Speaker 1: plastics in the United States does not get recycled. So
Speaker 1: now we see a massive amount of plastic waste going
Speaker 1: to Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Turkey and more recently Africa.
Speaker 1: You have talked about how only plastics that have that
Speaker 1: number one or number two in the little recycling triangle
Speaker 1: that we see on all the plastics um that only
Speaker 1: those are recycled. So why don't we just make all
Speaker 1: the plastic out of oaks. We could. We have to
Speaker 1: create a law to require it though, you know, and
Speaker 1: I want to explain why we have such an abysmally
Speaker 1: low recycling rate for plastics. If you have a newspaper,
Speaker 1: you can put that newspaper when you're done reading it
Speaker 1: into your recycling bin. Chances are it will get recycled
Speaker 1: into a new newspaper or a cardboard box, and it
Speaker 1: can be recycled, not forever, but a significant time. It
Speaker 1: can go around. Aluminum can can get recycled into aluminium can.
Speaker 1: The challenge with plastics is there are hundreds of different
Speaker 1: types of plastics. Um They're all different resins, they all
Speaker 1: have different toxic chemical additives and different colorance. So think
Speaker 1: of your own home. You might have a bright orange
Speaker 1: hard plastic detergent bottle near your your washing machine, and
Speaker 1: then your refrigerator might have a squeezeable clear soft ketchup bottle.
Speaker 1: You can't recycle those two types of plastics together. Um,
Speaker 1: the recycling process for plastics just doesn't work because it's
Speaker 1: such a heterogeneous waste stream. So number one and number
Speaker 1: two plastics do have a market, particularly beverage bottles that
Speaker 1: have deposits on them, because that material is kept separate
Speaker 1: and clean. So your idea is a good one, but
Speaker 1: it would be fought vigorous sleep by Big Plastic because
Speaker 1: they want to be able to make any kind of plastic,
Speaker 1: any color, any chemical additive and sell it to you
Speaker 1: and I. The problem is once they sell it to us,
Speaker 1: their responsibility ends, and then you and I as taxpayers
Speaker 1: are stuck with the cost of properly collecting, processing, and
Speaker 1: disposing of all of this. Judith, thanks thanks for coming
Speaker 1: on the show by pleasure. So if a lot of
Speaker 1: the plastic we throw away can't be recycled, where does
Speaker 1: it go? Kitch chollel and investigative reporter for Bloomberg, said
Speaker 1: out to find the answer to that very question, and
Speaker 1: he joins me now from London. Hey Wes So Kate,
Speaker 1: you and voice like Muskva, your Bloomberg colleague, actually set
Speaker 1: out to find out what actually happens that bag when
Speaker 1: you put it in the recycler, and you went about
Speaker 1: it in a clever way. Can you describe what you did? Well?
Speaker 1: We we had an enticing mystery to unravel, really, which is,
Speaker 1: you know what happens to this stuff once we put
Speaker 1: it in the trash can? And you know, I had
Speaker 1: I did some researching online and I made a few
Speaker 1: phone calls, and it was incredibly difficult to get a
Speaker 1: clear answer that no one really seemed to know, not
Speaker 1: the waste companies, not the consumer companies that sell plastic goods.
Speaker 1: It was all a bit uncertain. And I've heard rumors
Speaker 1: from environmental activists that most of it, most of the
Speaker 1: UK's supermarket trash goes to Poland, or a significant portion
Speaker 1: of it goes to Poland. Um. But you know, I
Speaker 1: couldn't be certain. I figured the only way to know
Speaker 1: for sure, the only way to really get that answer
Speaker 1: would be to track it. Yeah, I wanted to look
Speaker 1: at Tesco, which is the UK's biggest supermarkets chain, and
Speaker 1: it also is one that makes a big play of
Speaker 1: its recyclability to recycle soft plastics, which are really hard
Speaker 1: to recycle anywhere. Are they so hard to recycle soft plastic,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's because they are a mess of
Speaker 1: different um chemicals and products all blended together for specific purposes.
Speaker 1: There's not one type of plastic. There's you know, several
Speaker 1: different kinds, and each of them contain different additives, and
Speaker 1: all those additives have to be either taken out um
Speaker 1: or combined together to make a good quality recycled plastic.
Speaker 1: If you just take a bunch of soft plastic stuff
Speaker 1: and put it together and try to recycle it, what
Speaker 1: comes out is unusable good um. So it all has
Speaker 1: to be separated, It all has to be has have
Speaker 1: all chemical chemical additives cleverly taken out, and it's a
Speaker 1: really difficult process. It's a reason why only about one
Speaker 1: or two percent of that stuff, even in the in
Speaker 1: Europe gets recycled. So I picked up a Tesco plastic
Speaker 1: bag um some some clear soft plastic that was wrapped
Speaker 1: around a bit of lettuce and a lentil puff wrapper,
Speaker 1: and I glued or taped tiny digital trackers into each
Speaker 1: of them, and I deposited them at three different Tesco
Speaker 1: stores in London, and then I spent the next two
Speaker 1: weeks glued on my phone. When you say you deposited
Speaker 1: them at the stores. They were recycling bins out the
Speaker 1: store where you put it in, and then the assumption
Speaker 1: is they're going to take it away and recycling. Exactly,
Speaker 1: they they invited their customers to to to bring back
Speaker 1: their soft plastics and put them in these special white
Speaker 1: bins displayed prominently at the front of the store with
Speaker 1: the idea that they would be recycled and so the
Speaker 1: so the assumption is they're going to be taken someplace
Speaker 1: in London or close by and there's a recycling facility.
Speaker 1: None of us really knows. Frankly, none of us is
Speaker 1: really asking that many questions because we're just assuming that
Speaker 1: somebody else is going to take care of this problem
Speaker 1: for us. But the natural assumption is that your plastic
Speaker 1: packaging is going to get turned into new plastic packaging.
Speaker 1: That's what most people understand by recycling. You know, my
Speaker 1: bottle is going to become a new bottle, my crisp
Speaker 1: wrapper will become a new soft plastic wrapper. Turns out
Speaker 1: that wasn't the case. So so exactly where did you
Speaker 1: find you've keaped glued all these old trackers in and
Speaker 1: sent them on their way, And then what did you do.
Speaker 1: I watched them ping across Europe. Basically, the first one
Speaker 1: circled the M twenty five, which is a ring road
Speaker 1: around London, and then disappeared in the middle of the
Speaker 1: Thames Um. To this day, I have no idea what
Speaker 1: happened to it. I can only assume that it was
Speaker 1: shaken off a lorry or something and and just made
Speaker 1: its way into the waterway. But the other two um
Speaker 1: also circled d M twenty five, and then they went
Speaker 1: to the UK's biggest port, which is at Felix s
Speaker 1: though a place called Harridge Um. And then and I
Speaker 1: could see them boarding a ferry terminal and they were
Speaker 1: shipped over to the Netherlands, both of them together. They
Speaker 1: were in the same load. They weren't in the same load.
Speaker 1: They took the almost exact same routes at a couple
Speaker 1: of days apart. So there was obviously a network here
Speaker 1: of of of trash coming from the TESCO system going
Speaker 1: through this this specific port and then going to the
Speaker 1: same place. And I watched these things ping their way
Speaker 1: across Europe. They quickly went through the Netherlands. They crossed
Speaker 1: Germany west to east in the space of about twenty
Speaker 1: four hours, and then both trackers landed at the exact
Speaker 1: same spot in Poland, which is a small town called Jellonnagora.
Speaker 1: After the break, my conversation with kitsch Ale continues. Now Poland,
Speaker 1: Why Poland? That's that's the big question, you know, why
Speaker 1: why would you expend all these resources shipping plastic garbage
Speaker 1: from London to Poland? And the simple answer is that
Speaker 1: it's much much cheaper to dispose of plastic waste Poland
Speaker 1: that is in the UK. Now is the assumption that
Speaker 1: that was the end of this experiment, that that is
Speaker 1: where these plastic ams wound up? Yeah, I had a
Speaker 1: feeling wasn't the end of the journey. We actually, me
Speaker 1: and my colleague Void check we we we visited the
Speaker 1: site in Jelonne a Goa, which is a vast warehouse
Speaker 1: with plastic piled up outside um and it was pretty
Speaker 1: clear that they weren't doing the recycling in there. You know,
Speaker 1: it didn't have a huge amounts of industrial machinery or
Speaker 1: smokestacks coming out. What it looked like was it was
Speaker 1: a massive storage depot and we learned that that that
Speaker 1: actually was the case. Jelenaga is a stopover points of
Speaker 1: plastic on the way somewhere else, and so both bits
Speaker 1: of plastic that ended up there stayed there for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks and then moved on somewhere else. I
Speaker 1: imagine you went to Tesco and showed them your findings.
Speaker 1: What did they say. Tesco stance is that they have
Speaker 1: a relationship with a supplier who handles this waste for them,
Speaker 1: that they regularly check the supplier to ensure that the
Speaker 1: waste is being disposed of properly, and that all the
Speaker 1: garbage that they collect is you know, is sent to
Speaker 1: a recycling center as best they can work out. So
Speaker 1: what they do is they contract with another supplier and
Speaker 1: then the supplier certifies to them that it's being handled correctly,
Speaker 1: and from there tescos view is that the responsibility for
Speaker 1: the plastic has been satisfied. Exactly Kit you happened to
Speaker 1: put these trackers in uh Tesco bag. But we should
Speaker 1: say that Tesco is just one of thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of places where you can find these bags that everyone,
Speaker 1: every retailer, everyone uses them. Yeah, that's right. Test Tesco
Speaker 1: isn't the only company doing this. In fact, the idea
Speaker 1: of soft plastic recycling came from the major U. S.
Speaker 1: Supermarket chains, where you can still there are places where
Speaker 1: you can deliver your soft plastics outside store. It's an
Speaker 1: appealing solution because it means that they can attempt to
Speaker 1: affect change without relying on local government or local companies
Speaker 1: to collect the waste for them. It gets delivered to
Speaker 1: their doorstep. So was that the end of the journey
Speaker 1: through these trackers or did they continue to move on
Speaker 1: from Poland to other countries. The trackers continued to work,
Speaker 1: and we watched one of them travel all the way
Speaker 1: across West Poland's through to the east to another small
Speaker 1: town where they were delivered to an industrial facility and
Speaker 1: then disappeared. We suspect they were burned for energy there,
Speaker 1: although we don't know for sure. And the other tracker
Speaker 1: took a much more interesting routes. It went dead for
Speaker 1: several weeks and then it finally pinged its location in
Speaker 1: southern Turkey. In southern Turkey, yeah, and that's where it
Speaker 1: met its end. The tracker, at least, I wish I
Speaker 1: could say that I knew that was the case, but
Speaker 1: we again, we we sent a reporter to the site
Speaker 1: where where the tracker was pinging its location from and
Speaker 1: there was a huge pile of terrible quality mixed plastic
Speaker 1: dumped in a yard I say dumped. We spoke to
Speaker 1: someone who said that they had bought the plastic from
Speaker 1: a waste proka and they were planning to sell it
Speaker 1: on for recycling purposes. So it could have gone to
Speaker 1: a recycler in Turkey. Um, it could have been exported
Speaker 1: again to a recycler in Asia. UM. Frankly, no one
Speaker 1: knows for sure. We'll never know the answer. It could
Speaker 1: also have just been buried or dumped or burned. We
Speaker 1: don't know. Kitchell, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot coming up. That plastic bags journey doesn't end there.
Speaker 1: That's after the break. I'm joined by Matt Campbell, Asia
Speaker 1: editor for Bloomberg Business Week. He is based in Singapore. Matt,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: having me with Now. We've been talking today about the
Speaker 1: very strange and convoluted path that plastics, that plastic ballow
Speaker 1: of your throwaway takes throughout the world after you put
Speaker 1: it in what you think has recycling been uh and
Speaker 1: often winds up in a big pile halfway around the world,
Speaker 1: and you went out to actually see what that looks
Speaker 1: like when all of this trash reaches the end of
Speaker 1: the line and you went to Thailand, can you just
Speaker 1: describe what you saw, because it is really something that's
Speaker 1: right west. So, something that I didn't know about the
Speaker 1: plastic industry and really the waste industry generally, is there
Speaker 1: is a huge long haul waste export trade. So I
Speaker 1: visited recycling facilities around Thailand, mostly in the industrial belt
Speaker 1: that extends from Bangkok along the coast, where there is
Speaker 1: very large and very profitable recycling industry that is based partly,
Speaker 1: not entirely, but to a substantial effect on imported waste
Speaker 1: from elsewhere in the world. So these are huge loads
Speaker 1: of plastic that come from in the main wealthier countries
Speaker 1: and are sent to Southeast Asia to be dealt with MATT. So,
Speaker 1: when you went to Thailand and you saw the effects
Speaker 1: of all of these bottles and other uh throwaway containers
Speaker 1: that ended up in Thailand, what did you see? What
Speaker 1: did it actually look like? Well? I did get some
Speaker 1: glimpses of what the recycling industry really looks like in practice.
Speaker 1: There was one moment which was really kind of unforgettable
Speaker 1: seeing a woman, a middle aged thie woman in sort
Speaker 1: of covered up head to toe guests to avoid getting
Speaker 1: gunk on her, just sitting in a huge pile of
Speaker 1: plastic bottles methodically peeling away the labels. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that is that when these things do go into
Speaker 1: a plastic facility where they have to be melted down
Speaker 1: and reconstituted into new packaging, you don't want anything extraneous
Speaker 1: on them. So if you do have someone they're peeling
Speaker 1: the labels off, you can get more for each kilogram
Speaker 1: of plastic. A lot of it, First of all, do
Speaker 1: not get recycled in any way. The vast majority of
Speaker 1: plastic waste in the world is not recycled. It's just
Speaker 1: dumped or burned. And why is that. There are a
Speaker 1: number of reasons for it. One is infrastructure. You know,
Speaker 1: in many developing countries in particular, they're not enough recycling
Speaker 1: infrastructure to handle the volumes of plastic that The plastic industry,
Speaker 1: which if you like, comprises consumer companies you know, Coke, Pepsi,
Speaker 1: as well as the petrochemical companies that actually produce the
Speaker 1: raw materials for plastic, big oil, you know, Exxon Shell, BP,
Speaker 1: they've pumped more plastic into the world than there are
Speaker 1: recycling plants to handle, so a huge amount never recycled. Now,
Speaker 1: you said that a lot of the countries where this
Speaker 1: plastic ends up don't have enough recycling capability to actually
Speaker 1: handle all of it. Why is it then that they
Speaker 1: keep taking more and more of it if they don't
Speaker 1: have a way to actually recycl it into something else.
Speaker 1: To understand how all of this plastic waste ended up
Speaker 1: in the places where it is now, which are largely
Speaker 1: in South East Asia, you have to go back a
Speaker 1: few years. So for the last oh thirty years or so,
Speaker 1: China was the major destination for exports of waste, plastic
Speaker 1: and all other kinds of waste. There was a huge
Speaker 1: recycling industry in China. A lot of companies had sprung
Speaker 1: up to deal with imported plastic from places like the US.
Speaker 1: A lot of people got very rich doing this. But
Speaker 1: in sen the Chinese government decided that it didn't want
Speaker 1: to have this industry anymore, that it was causing too
Speaker 1: many problems, too much pollution. Uh, and they shut it
Speaker 1: down pretty much overnight. Uh. You know, And when China
Speaker 1: decides to do something, they can do it in a
Speaker 1: in a very comprehensive and effective way. So exports to
Speaker 1: China essentially disappeared over the course of a few months.
Speaker 1: But all that plastic, all that waste, still had to
Speaker 1: go somewhere. It's like a balloon. If you press it
Speaker 1: down in one place, it'll pop up somewhere else. And
Speaker 1: the somewhere turned out to be Southeast Asia, especially actually Malaysia,
Speaker 1: very close to where I'm sitting now, where there was
Speaker 1: a huge surge of plastic coming into kind of fly
Speaker 1: by night recycling factories that it all popped up very
Speaker 1: very quickly, often unlicensed, unregulated, totally illegal, and also Thailand, Indonesia,
Speaker 1: Vietnam and other countries around the region because you needed
Speaker 1: to send this stuff to places with minimal environmental standards,
Speaker 1: cheap labor, and in many cases officials who were easy
Speaker 1: to pay off, so that if you did get in trouble,
Speaker 1: you could still keep bringing in these loads of waste.
Speaker 1: You met a man uh I believe in Bangkok who
Speaker 1: had a recycling plant move in right next door. Can
Speaker 1: you describe sort of what happened to his life after
Speaker 1: that happened. This was a really remarkable experience. I met
Speaker 1: a man in the in the Bangkok suburbs named Venue
Speaker 1: jerramancom and Venue has a house on a quiet street
Speaker 1: and in what was a storage yard next to his
Speaker 1: house was suddenly turned into a small scale plastic recycling plant.
Speaker 1: And the and so the factor is right here, where
Speaker 1: would the fumes come from? From this side? Pomp from
Speaker 1: this hole and this while oh I see okay, yeah yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: and they have an extractor fan. Environmental groups have found
Speaker 1: a really terrible environmental effects around plastic recycling facilities all
Speaker 1: over the world. So in n use case, he suddenly
Speaker 1: noticed these very intense, acrid fumes floating into his house
Speaker 1: and particularly alarming, he started finding dead birds on his lawn.
Speaker 1: When you would find dead pigeons, was it around here?
Speaker 1: It's just it's all over the front of the house.
Speaker 1: So if this is killing pigeons, it's pretty bad. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's going to kill my family too. So I have
Speaker 1: to let it go, all right and leave this house. Yes,
Speaker 1: to leave the house. He and his wife began to
Speaker 1: get sick. They got headaches, nausea. He developed a red,
Speaker 1: itchy patch of skin just below his nostrils, and it
Speaker 1: was very clear to him that what had happened was
Speaker 1: a result of this plastic plant operating. How I should
Speaker 1: say that the company that runs the plastic plants as
Speaker 1: always denied this. They say they comply with environmental regulations
Speaker 1: and and that they responded to the news complaints. But
Speaker 1: what he did tell me at his home, which is
Speaker 1: now sold, was exactly in line with what environmental experts
Speaker 1: would expect to see from a poorly ventilated plastic waste
Speaker 1: recycling facility. Even since this morning this morning, still have
Speaker 1: a strong semeal strong smell this morning. Yes, inside the
Speaker 1: house when you woke up. No, no, no, I I
Speaker 1: can alsop here right, Oh, I see, I come here
Speaker 1: and I play it over in the house and inside
Speaker 1: the house has a strong smell of the chemistry. Wow, okay,
Speaker 1: So I need to I need to use the inside
Speaker 1: fan open and roid out to mega ventilation. So what
Speaker 1: is Thailand's government doing about this? As you can imagine,
Speaker 1: being a dumping ground for waste from other countries richer
Speaker 1: countries is not popular. It's very rarely popular, and in
Speaker 1: a number of countries in this region in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: there have been political efforts to restrict plastic imports. So
Speaker 1: Thailand is no exception. It is in the process of
Speaker 1: bringing in a phased ban on plastic waste imports that will,
Speaker 1: based on the current model they're looking at, take effect from.
Speaker 1: It will be fairly strict there there won't be a
Speaker 1: lot of em exceptions to it. There don't appear to
Speaker 1: be many loopholes, which is quite different from what we've
Speaker 1: seen in some other Southeast Asian countries. But I think
Speaker 1: it's it's important to remember it's very hard to enforce this,
Speaker 1: and it's very hard to enforce it in countries that
Speaker 1: don't have the kind of capabilities that the US or
Speaker 1: European governments do. There's a lot of illegal waste shipment,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of corruption and bribery throughout this region.
Speaker 1: And even if a country like Thailand does succeed in
Speaker 1: curbing plastic imports, you may see another example of the
Speaker 1: balloon phenomenon I mentioned earlier. All of this ust has
Speaker 1: to go somewhere. It cannot be recycled in the countries
Speaker 1: where it is generated because there isn't enough capacity, so
Speaker 1: it may go next to me and mar or Lous
Speaker 1: or or places in Africa that have even less capacity
Speaker 1: to deal with it. In a country like Thailand. Matt
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time. Of course, very
Speaker 1: happy to it, and you can find more reporting from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's journalists kitchellel and Matthew Campbell on Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
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