National Sword | Plastic Pollution

 PODCAST

Operation National Sword

When China joined the World Trade Organization, they started taking in the most of the world’s scrap. The shift coincided with a ramping up of global exports, and China sold wares all around the world in shipping containers. Rather than sending these containers back to China empty, it made sense to fill them with heavy bales of recycling. This made the whole cycle more cost-effective, and it became cheaper to send recycling to China than anywhere else. Cities around the world were able to subsidize their recycling program with the money from selling their waste, while also not having to deal with as much of the process — at least until National Sword.

Basically, National Sword was China’s ban on foreign recyclables. It banned four categories and 24 types on imports starting in 2018. And National Sword has steadily expanded, banning more recyclables since then, and it could potentially lead to the banning of all incoming recyclable materials by 2020, but that piece isn’t entirely clear yet. No one is sure exactly why this shift in policy happened, but some experts point to one particular turning point: a documentary film.

 The little girl washes her face in the gray plastic-polluted water and eats fish that have choked on bits of plastic.

Plastic Whale

 

 

every day is earth day

Harvey Lacey - House Built of Recycled Plastic Bags

Plastic Bricks - WALMART are you interested??

 

👉and, when all is said and tried, and plastic ‘needs’ to be discarded send it to a ‘brick maker’.

Introducing Peter Lewis from Dunedin, New Zealand.

‘Peter Lewis spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to patent plastic blocks in August 2002, and millions since then to develop industrial scale equipment. The Byfusion machine required to make the bricks is manufactured in New Zealand and can be exported in shipping containers. Their mass production techniques are appropriate for many areas of the world, including turning the massive plastic garbage patches in the oceans into useful products. 

See Great Pacific Garbage Patch for details on the extent of the problem. ‘ excerpt from article Recycled Plastic Block Houses  (http://www.motherearthnews.com)

‘These rock-hard bricks could be used for garden retaining or landscaping walls, and had other potential uses including shock absorbers behind crash barriers’. Read Peter’s full story from the Otago times 2010 article – by clicking on the image below.

Harvey Lacey a Texan man who evolved Peter’s idea further over the last few years, first by enlisting Peter’s help, machines and knowledge set up his own operation based in Texas, USA.

TIME to stop plastic

 

The plastic debris housed in landfills and natural environments — currently 4.9 billion metric tons — will more than double by 2050, scientists reported Wednesday in Science Advances.

READ: Humans have made 8.3 billion tons of plastic. Where does it all go? | PBS NewsHour

Byfusion machine + Plastic Bricks

and, when all is said and tried, and plastic ‘needs’ to be discarded send it to a ‘brick maker’.

Introducing Peter Lewis from Dunedin, New Zealand.

‘Peter Lewis spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to patent plastic blocks in August 2002, and millions since then to develop industrial scale equipment. The Byfusion machine required to make the bricks is manufactured in New Zealand and can be exported in shipping containers. Their mass production techniques are appropriate for many areas of the world, including turning the massive plastic garbage patches in the oceans into useful products. 

See Great Pacific Garbage Patch for details on the extent of the problem. ‘ excerpt from article Recycled Plastic Block Houses  (http://www.motherearthnews.com)

‘These rock-hard bricks could be used for garden retaining or landscaping walls, and had other potential uses including shock absorbers behind crash barriers’. Read Peter’s full story from the Otago times 2010 article – by clicking on the image below.

Harvey Lacey a Texan man who evolved Peter’s idea further over the last few years, first by enlisting Peter’s help, machines and knowledge set up his own operation based in Texas, USA.