Australia’s recycling crisis is rooted in an addiction to cheap trash.

Like much of the developed world, we are hooked on dumping our rubbish in China.

For a while, it worked. China’s enormous factories were hungry for our waste paper and plastic and rubber, which they could recycle and sell back to us at a much higher price.

But China has now slammed the door shut on yang laji  – “foreign garbage” – and Australia looks set to pay the price for years of complacency.

via Addicted to cheap trash: the roots of our recycling crisis