Good for China, they've got an environmental nightmare to deal with, and part of it comes from the US offloading lots of "recycling" operations there, and I use that term loosely, particularly for electronics. We also "export" pollution to China by buying cheaper products that would be more expensive if they didn't externalize their pollution costs, and it's sure better to externalize that pollution abroad than domestically. The US, in my opinion, has been burying its head in the sand about the pollution which occurs when manufacturing everything that we use.
Recycling, save for very specific things, is neither environmentally beneficial nor economically viable. We recycle so many things because the operations are subsidized, and we feel good because we assume the recycling bin doesn't end up in the dump.
Sorting refuse for recycling is a time consuming, tedious process. I hope that automation can actually make recycling more things viable. Reuse is best, but lots of things can be recycled for raw materials, particularly metals. Plastics don't recycle very well, glass requires more energy to reprocess than making new glass, and paper can be allowed to biodegrade or mixed into existing paper process.
Recycling, save for very specific things, is neither environmentally beneficial nor economically viable. We recycle so many things because the operations are subsidized, and we feel good because we assume the recycling bin doesn't end up in the dump.
Sorting refuse for recycling is a time consuming, tedious process. I hope that automation can actually make recycling more things viable. Reuse is best, but lots of things can be recycled for raw materials, particularly metals. Plastics don't recycle very well, glass requires more energy to reprocess than making new glass, and paper can be allowed to biodegrade or mixed into existing paper process.