China's costly ban on foreign trash

Recycled imports help manufacturers and the environment. What's not to like?

Giant bales of recycled paper and plastic are piling up across the US. Six months ago, most of them would’ve been bound for China, the world's leading importer of recyclables. But earlier this year, China started restricting and even banning some of those imports on environmental grounds. It’s a crowd-pleasing policy for the Chinese government, but the real beneficiaries are up-and-coming Southeast Asian economies keen to relocate China’s “workshop to the world” to their own industrial parks.

Over the past four decades, several factors helped China transform itself into a global manufacturing powerhouse, including low-wage labour, good infrastructure and far-sighted policy.