2019年经济学人 东南亚国家对洋垃圾进口说“不”

东南亚国家对洋垃圾进口说“不”

Asia

来源于《亚洲》版块

Recycling

回收利用

Refusing refuse

拒绝废弃物

South-East Asia is fed up with foreign waste

东南亚受够了外国垃圾

There is no point collecting recyclable waste unless someone is willing to buy it and actually do the recycling. Until late 2017 China was the world’s biggest importer of scrap¹ by far. This made sense. Like most other forms of manufacturing, recycling is cheaper there. Moreover, Chinese factories consumed lots of the resulting plastic and pulp², whereas developed economies, which tend to be net importers of goods, had plenty of plastic bottles and cardboard boxes to spare. It also helped that shipping³ to China was cheap, since ships would often otherwise return to the country with empty containers.

只有有人愿意购买可回收的垃圾，并实际进行回收，收集可回收垃圾才有意义。到2017年底为止，中国一直是世界上最大的废料进口国。这是有道理的。像大多数其他形式的制造业一样，回收在中国更便宜。此外，中国工厂消耗了大量由此产生的塑料和纸浆，而发达经济体(往往是商品的净进口国)则有大量塑料瓶和纸箱可供备用。此外，运往中国的航运成本较低也起到了一定作用，因为如果不这样做，船只往往会带着空集装箱返回中国。

All this came to a halt when the Chinese government banned the import of all but the purest scrap material in 2017, killing⁴ a trade worth $24bn a year. Waste dealers⁵ in the rich world had to scramble⁶ to find new buyers. South-East Asia soon emerged as the pre-eminent destination for foreign waste. Unfortunately, the region’s recycling industry is much smaller than China’s; its processing plants were quickly overwhelmed. Plastics from America and Europe have piled up in landfills. Lots of toxic⁷ rubbish has simply been torched.

2017年，中国政府禁止进口除最纯净废料外的所有废料，导致每年240亿美元的贸易损失。从此之后，情况便截然不同。富裕国家的废品经销商不得不争先恐后地寻找新的买家。东南亚很快成为外国垃圾的首选目的地。不幸的是，该地区的回收产业规模远远小于中国；它的加工厂很快就应接不暇。来自美国和欧洲的塑料堆积在垃圾填埋场。许多有毒的垃圾被简单地焚烧了。

South-East Asian governments are not pleased. They have begun to ban or crimp imports themselves, abruptly⁸ diminishing a booming business. On May 28th Yeo Bee Yin, Malaysia’s environment minister, complaining that “garbage [was] being traded under the pretext⁹ of recycling”, announced that her government would be sending back 3,000 tonnes of foreign plastic. Much of it was of poor quality, she noted¹⁰, and hence unrecyclable.

东南亚各国政府对此并不满意。并已经开始禁止或限制进口，这突然削弱了蓬勃发展的业务。5月28日，马来西亚环境部长杨碧吟抱怨“垃圾(以回收为借口)被交易”，并宣布马来西亚政府将退回3000吨外国塑料。她指出，这些垃圾大部分质量很差，因此无法回收。

Thailand plans to ban plastic-waste imports by 2021. Vietnam’s government has similar ideas. Kate O’Neill of the University of California, Berkeley, reckons these bans are motivated not only by environmental concerns but also by pride: Asia does not want to be the world’s dumping ground.

泰国计划到2021年禁止塑料垃圾进口。越南政府也有类似的想法。加州大学伯克利分校的凯特?奥尼尔认为，这些禁令不仅是出于环境考虑，也是出于自豪感：亚洲不想成为世界的垃圾场。

Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, recently threatened to go to war with Canada if it did not take back a shipment of plastic scrap. Canada agreed to take it away, and Mr Duterte stopped blustering¹¹ after an election had passed. All the same, rich-world exporters might want to start work on Plan C.

菲律宾总统杜特尔特最近威胁称，如果加拿大不收回一批塑料废料，他将与加拿大开战。加拿大同意运回塑料废料，杜特尔特在大选结束后停止了咆哮。尽管如此，发达国家的出口商可能还是想开始实施C计划。

1 scrap   

n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废

参考例句：

• A man comes round regularly collecting scrap.有个男人定时来收废品。
• Sell that car for scrap.把那辆汽车当残品卖了吧。

2 pulp   

n.果肉，纸浆；v.化成纸浆，除去...果肉，制成纸浆

参考例句：

• The pulp of this watermelon is too spongy.这西瓜瓤儿太肉了。
• The company manufactures pulp and paper products.这个公司制造纸浆和纸产品。

3 shipping   

n.船运（发货，运输，乘船）

参考例句：

• We struck a bargain with an American shipping firm.我们和一家美国船运公司谈成了一笔生意。
• There's a shipping charge of ￡5 added to the price.价格之外另加五英镑运输费。

4 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

5 dealers   

n.商人( dealer的名词复数 )；贩毒者；毒品贩子；发牌者

参考例句：

• There was fast bidding between private collectors and dealers. 私人收藏家和交易商急速竞相喊价。
• The police were corrupt and were operating in collusion with the drug dealers. 警察腐败，与那伙毒品贩子内外勾结。

6 scramble   

v.爬行，攀爬，杂乱蔓延，碎片，片段，废料

参考例句：

• He broke his leg in his scramble down the wall.他爬墙摔断了腿。
• It was a long scramble to the top of the hill.到山顶须要爬登一段长路。

7 toxic   

adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的

参考例句：

• The factory had accidentally released a quantity of toxic waste into the sea.这家工厂意外泄漏大量有毒废物到海中。
• There is a risk that toxic chemicals might be blasted into the atmosphere.爆炸后有毒化学物质可能会进入大气层。

8 abruptly   

adv.突然地，出其不意地

参考例句：

• He gestured abruptly for Virginia to get in the car.他粗鲁地示意弗吉尼亚上车。
• I was abruptly notified that a half-hour speech was expected of me.我突然被通知要讲半个小时的话。

9 pretext   

n.借口，托词

参考例句：

• He used his headache as a pretext for not going to school.他借口头疼而不去上学。
• He didn't attend that meeting under the pretext of sickness.他以生病为借口，没参加那个会议。

10 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

11 blustering   

adj.狂风大作的，狂暴的v.外强中干的威吓( bluster的现在分词 )；咆哮；（风）呼啸；狂吹

参考例句：

• It was five and a half o'clock now, and a raw, blustering morning. 这时才五点半，正是寒气逼人，狂风咆哮的早晨。 来自辞典例句
• So sink the shadows of night, blustering, rainy, and all paths grow dark. 夜色深沉，风狂雨骤；到处途暗路黑。 来自辞典例句