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Comment by martyvis | Hacker News Reader

It seems at least one first world country is sending recycling waste to developing countries for supposed processing http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-22/malaysia-flooded-with-...

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Yes it is becoming a real problem here in Australia.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-11/australias-recycling-...

And just recently we started sending recycling to landfill in many places:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-06/councils-sending-thou...

Historically we've "outsourced" our recycling problem to Asian nations rather than develop or implement solutions at home, and unfortunately now our chickens are coming home to roost.

> rather than develop or implement solutions at home

I find this absolutely infuriating... it's the perfect job to give to the CSIRO (our public scientific research organisation) and provide government grants to get local recycling off the ground. There's so much talk around "supporting local industry", but when decisions are actually made, they use overseas suppliers 9 times out of 10.

Agreed. I mean if we look at the CSIRO's list of achievements:

https://www.csiro.au/en/About/History-achievements/Top-10-in...

and considering the defunding that has been going on, particularly with respect to climate change:

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/csiro-australia-...

It really is a sad picture indeed.

Another one being the Philippines - Canada case

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/world/asia/philippines-ca...

Is the issue in Canada similar to what the sibling describes in Australia - insufficient recycling infrastructure?

There's also a problem that a lot of this smuggling may be illegal (not willingly accepted by other countries under their laws) and fraudulent (done instead of real recycling). So the statistics we have about the destination of recycling and general waste may be wrong.

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