China Bans Import of Foreign Waste

China filed a notification with the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday 18 July, informing of intentions to ban imports of four classes and 24 kinds of solid waste by the end of 2017.

The ban will allegedly prevent the import of scrap plastics, unsorted waste paper, certain metal recycling residues, waste textile materials and slag from steelmaking.

“By the end of 2017, China will forbid the import of 4 classes, 24 kinds of solid wastes, including plastics waste from living sources, vanadium slag, unsorted waste paper and waste textile materials,” China said in the WTO filing, as reported by Reuters.

According to therecycler.com, the Recycling Association in the UK launched a “Quality First campaign” almost a year ago to highlight the risk of China taking such actions. The campaign aims to sort the recycled materials to the highest quality so they can’t be rejected.

The impact of these actions on the cartridge recycling business are yet to be determined.