研究称巨大的塑料垃圾浪潮将淹没美国【正文】 [美国媒体]

A giant wave of plastic garbage could flood the U.S., a study says

研究称巨大的塑料垃圾浪潮将淹没美国

tidal wave of plastic trash will flood the world over the next decade, a new study says, and warnings are already blaring like sirens in the United States.

一项新的研究表明，塑料垃圾浪潮将在未来十年淹没世界。在美国，如汽笛声般的警报已经响起。

In the wake of China’s decision to stop importing nearly half of the world’s scrap starting Jan. 1, particularly from the wealthiest nations, waste management operations across the country are struggling to process heavy volumes of paper and plastic that they can no longer unload on the Chinese. States such as Massachusetts and Oregon are lifting restrictions against pouring recyclable material into landfills to grant the operations relief.

随着中国决定从1月1日开始停止进口全世界近一半的废料，特别是最富裕国家的废料，国内各地的废物管理业务正在艰难地处理大量的纸张和塑料 -这些纸张和塑料已不能再倾倒给中国人了。像马萨诸塞州和俄勒冈州这些州都取消了反对向垃圾填埋场倾倒可回收材料的限制。



A motor tricycle loaded with recyclable plastic bottles rides along a street in the Chinese city of Taiyuan in July 2012. (Reuters)

2012年7月中国太原市，一辆装有可回收塑料瓶的机动三轮车正在沿着一条街道骑行。（路透社）

If Europe and the rest of the world struggle like the United States, according to the study by researchers at the University of Georgia released Wednesday, an estimated 111 million metric tons of plastic waste will pile up by 2030. Based on the amount of domestic scrap exported to China, the researchers estimate that the United States will have to contend with 37 million metric tons of extra waste, an amount it’s not prepared to handle.

根据佐治亚大学周三发布的研究报告，如果欧洲和世界其他地区都像美国一样陷入困境，据估计，到2030年，将有1.11亿吨塑料垃圾堆积起来。按照国内出口到中国的废料量，研究人员估计，美国将不得不为3700万吨不准备处理的额外废料发愁。

The more immediate and noticeable change for most Americans, both conservationists and waste management operators said, will be in their homes. As recycling programs change or even disappear, residents will face new questions about what material can be recycled and what cannot.

环境保护主义者和废料管理人员表示，对于大多数美国人而言，最直接和最明显的变化将在体现在他们的家里。随着回收计划的改变甚至消失，居民将面临关于什么材料可以回收和什么不能回收的新问题。

“It will impact recycling programs across the country,” said Ben Harvey, owner and president of E.L. Harvey & Sons Recycling Services in Westborough, Mass. “If there’s no place for this stuff to go, what’s the sense of collecting it? We’re going to look at the programs and say why are we collecting it, it’s not a commodity anymore. It’s a big thing. It’s a scary thing.”

“这将影响到全国各地的回收计划，”马萨诸塞州韦斯特伯鲁的哈维父子回收服务公司的负责人兼总裁Ben Harvey说道，“如果没有这些垃圾的安置之地，那么收集它有什么意义？看看现在这种情况，这些废料不再有价值了，为什么我们要收集它。这是一件大事。这是一件可怕的事。”

Conservationists who reviewed the study and found it credible said such heavy loads of garbage worldwide would not only continue leaking into oceans but would also likely spill into neighborhoods.

参与这项研究的环保主义者认为，全球范围内的垃圾大量堆积不仅会继续渗入海洋，而且还可能泄露到邻近地区。

China has been the world’s largest importer of scrap such as plastic since 1992, as part of an effort to turn garbage to gold through recycling. But a quarter-century later, it determined that a huge volume of the plastics are mainly single-use items, such as garbage bags, bubble wrap, bottles and small packages, that are low in quality and value when recycled.

自1992以来，中国一直是世界上最大的废塑料进口国，是通过回收将垃圾转化为黄金做出努力的一部分力量。但是在25年后的今天，它确定大量塑料制品大部分是一次性物品，如垃圾袋，泡沫包装，瓶子和小包装等，这些在回收时质量和价值都很低。

Last year, China decided to ban those plastics, along with low-value paper products and other trash that no longer fit its needs. The importance of China’s recycling effort can hardly be overstated. Seventy-two percent of the world’s plastic waste went to China and Hong Kong since 1992, but about 63 percent of the plastic Hong Kong accepted was passed along to China, the study said.

去年，中国决定禁止进口这些塑料，还有低价值的纸制品和其他不再适合其需求的垃圾。中国为回收做出的努力其重要性怎么说都不夸张。该研究报告称，自1992年以来，全球72％的塑料废弃物都流向中国和香港，但大约香港接收的63％的塑料废弃物最终还是流到中国。



Scavengers collect valuable waste at Sidoarjo garbage dump in East Java, on June 5. About 8 million tons of plastic waste are dumped into the world’s oceans every year — the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic being tipped into the sea every minute of every day. (Juni Kriswantojuni/AFP/Getty Images)
6月5日，拾荒者在在东爪哇岛的诗都阿佐垃圾场收集有价值的废品。每年大约有800万吨塑料废弃物被倾倒进世界各地的海洋 - 相当于每天每分钟都有一车塑料垃圾倾倒进海洋中。（Juni Kriswantojuni /法新社/ Getty图片）

The Western world has come to count on China, which has accepted 106 million metric tons, 45 percent of the world total, in the 26 years since its recycling effort began.

西方世界已经开始依赖中国，自从它开始其回收工作以来，26年中它已经接受了1亿600万吨废塑料，占世界总量的45%。

“There’s not really another huge main hub where this material has to go” other than China, said Jenna Jambeck, an associate professor at the University of Georgia and one of the researchers of the new study, which is published in the journal Science Advances. Asian nations around China, such as Vietnam, that also import trash for recycling lack the infrastructure to accommodate China’s heavy load. “There isn’t another individual country that has the capacity that China had to take the material,” she said.

这项新研究的研究人员之一佐治亚大学副教授珍娜贾贝克，在《科学进展》杂志上发表说：“除了中国之外，还没有真正的另一个能接收这种材料的大型主要中心。”越南等中国周边的亚洲国家也进口垃圾进行回收利用，但是它缺乏中国那种所负担的载荷的基础设施。她说：“没有哪个单一国家有能力像中国那样接受这种材料。”

The United States is the largest individual exporter of scrap to China. The European Union was the largest regional exporter.

美国是对中国最大的个体废料出口国。欧盟则是最大的出口地区。

Without another destination nation on the horizon, and the lack of infrastructure to process its own recyclable garbage, the United States, especially the producers of plastics, need to make changes or face being buried under it, Jambeck said. “We need to think about how we design our product and packaging, think about having them have a higher value for recycling,” she said, reflecting on the recommendations in the study.

贾贝克说，如果这个世界上没有另一个目标国家，而又缺乏处理自己可回收垃圾的基础设施，那么美国，特别是塑料生产商需要做出改变或面临被垃圾掩埋。“我们需要思考要如何设计我们的产品和包装，并考虑让它们的回收利用价值更高，”她说道，也反映了这项研究的建议。

Jambeck, who wrote the study with a UGA doctoral candidate, Amy Brooks, is a rare scientist who is drawn to trash and the issues it creates. In a strange but true story, she fell in love with her husband at a landfill. In an interview with Knowable Magazine last year, she described becoming fascinated with landfills in graduate school. 

贾贝克与佐治亚大学博士候选人艾米布鲁克斯一起撰写了这份研究报告，她是一名少见的被垃圾及其所创造的问题所吸引的科学家。说起来有个奇怪而真实的事，她是在垃圾填埋场爱上她的丈夫的。在去年接受Knowable杂志采访时，她说她对研究生院的垃圾填埋非常着迷。

The authors acknowledge that plastics are a miracle creation that’s in nearly every commodity people touch — cars, chairs, drainage pipes and lunch containers that workers open next to the plastic keyboard that issues commands to desktop computers housed in plastic. But the downside is the material can last seemingly forever.

作者们承认，塑料是一种奇迹创造，几乎所有人们接触到的商品都含有塑料- 汽车，椅子，排水管，工作人员在塑料键盘旁边打开的午餐盒，而键盘又向装有塑料的台式计算机发出命令，等等。但不利的一面是，这种材料似乎永远不会消失。

Studies say that between 8.3 billion and 9 billion metric tons have been produced since 1950. That’s more than four Mount Everest’s worth of trash. According to a separate study released last year, all but 2 billion metric tons of that plastic still sits on Earth as garbage in landfills, recycled trash or pollution scattered in the environment, including deep oceans where a plastic island twice the size of Texas floats.

研究表明，自1950年以来，已经生产了83亿到90亿吨的塑料量。这是比四倍珠穆朗玛峰还多的垃圾。根据去年发布的另一项研究报告，除了20亿吨外，所有塑料仍然存在于地球上，作为垃圾填埋场中的垃圾，回收垃圾或散落在环境中的污染物，包括远洋中漂浮着的两倍于德克萨斯州的塑料岛。

Plastic has been discovered in the bellies of dead whales and the decomposed stomachs of seabirds that mistook it for food. And yet, production of plastic continues almost without regulation. “The historic growth in production has outpaced almost all other manufactured materials,” the University of Georgia study said. “Plastic as a material for packaging has had significant advantages . . . however, plastic packaging for food, beverage, and tobacco items is often used only once, which has contributed to 61 percent of global beach litter.”

曾在死鲸的肚子里和海鸟的腐烂的胃中发现了塑料，它们都误认为塑料是食物。然而，塑料的生产还是几乎没有监管。佐治亚大学的研究表示：“塑料生产的历史增长已经超过了几乎所有其他制造材料。作为包装材料的塑料具有显着的优势……然而，食品，饮料和烟草制品的塑料包装通常只使用一次，这占据了全球海滩垃圾的61％。”



A Chinese laborer sorts plastic bottles for recycling in Dong Xiao Kou village, on the outskirts of Beijing, in 2015. (Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images)
2015年，一名中国劳工在北京郊区的东小口村分类回收塑料瓶。（Fred Dufour /法新社/ Getty图片）

In 1960, plastic accounted for 1 percent of junk in municipal landfills across the world. As single-package containers led to an explosion in convenience and use, that number grew to 10 percent in 2005. If the trend continues, researchers say 13 billion metric tons of plastic will sit in dumps.

1960年，塑料占全世界城市垃圾填埋场垃圾的1％。随着一次性包装带来的便利性和使用方面的爆炸性增长，2005年这一数字增长至10％。如果这种趋势继续下去，研究人员称130亿吨塑料将被堆放在垃圾堆中。

During her studies of landfills, Jambeck developed a keen eye and understanding of what happens when plastic sits decade after decade. As plastics age and degrade, she said, their chemicals are released into the environment.

贾贝克在对垃圾填埋场进行研究期间，对塑料十年后的情况进行了敏锐的观察和了解。她说，随着塑料的老化和降解，它们的化学物质被释放到环境中。

Glass containers that were in wider use before plastics can break on a beach and slowly turn to sea-glass. But plastics leach chemicals into the sand that can be picked up by marine animals and accumulated in tissues, even ending up in seafood. As plastic piles up in landfills and creeps closer to communities, the same could happen on land.

在塑料之前，更广泛使用的玻璃容器可以在海滩上碎裂并慢慢变成海玻璃。但塑料将化学物质浸入沙子中，可以被海洋动物吸收并堆积在组织中，甚至最终存在于海鲜里。随着塑料堆积的垃圾填埋场越来越接近人类社区，地上也会发生同样的情况。

“This is coming, and we’re really going to have to contend with it,” said George Leonard, chief scientist at Ocean Conservancy. “It’s probably going to collapse our recycling market. The price of recycled plastic is going to drop further. It’s going to overwhelm the waste infrastructure. I think from an environmental standpoint we have to think about physical leakage from landfills of mismanaged plastic waste into the oceans.”

“这种情况即将到来，我们将不得不与它抗衡，”海洋保护协会首席科学家George Leonard说。“这可能会使我们的回收市场崩溃。回收塑料的价格将进一步下降。它将压垮处理废品的基础设施。我认为，从环境角度来看，我们必须考虑处理不当的垃圾填埋厂里的塑料垃圾物理泄露进入海洋。“

In Massachusetts, Harvey is watching it start to unfold in real time. Usually, “if I had 200 tons (of scrap) on the grounds that would be more than I would be comfortable with,” he said. But in recent months, Harvey said he had 6,000 tons of paper alone. Other operators probably have it worse. “I’m not one of the biggest processors of material, but I’m sizable,” he said.

在马萨诸塞州，Harvey正在看着这种情况实时进行。通常情况下，“如果我的回收站里有200吨（废料），这就已经不让我感到轻松了，”他说。但最近几个月，Harvey说他单是他这里就有6000吨纸。其他运营商可能会更糟糕。 “我不是最大的材料加工商之一，但也很可观了。”他说道。

Harvey said moving discarded paper is tougher than plastic because he’s still able to find a market for plastic within the United States, but he foresees a day when that will soon end. “Over saturation in the marketplace depresses prices. When you take China out, that material has to go somewhere. It competes with other markets. Too much supply, not enough demand because of an over abundance of scrap plastic,” Harvey said.

Harvey说，处理废弃的纸张比塑料更艰难，因为他仍然能够在美国境内找到塑料市场，但他预计这一天很快就会结束。“市场过度饱和会压低价格。当中国不接收之后，那些材料必须弄去其他地方。现在是供应过多，需求不足，因为废塑料太多了。” Harvey说道。

Clearly, waste managers in the United States aren’t ready for what will hit them, the study said. “They’re having to manage waste in a way they really weren’t prepared for,” Brooks said. 

该研究显示，显然，美国的废料管理者还没有准备好接受带给他们的打击。 “他们不得不以一种他们没有做好准备的方式来管理废料，”布鲁克斯说道。

“Now they’re going to send this waste to countries that are near China,” Brooks said. “Reports are showing that there are increases of waste in countries that don’t have the infrastructure to support it. It’s having a domino effect on the region.”

“现在他们会把这些废料送到中国附近的国家，”布鲁克斯说。 “报告显示，在没有基础设施支持的国家，废料有所增加。这种情况已经对这些地区产生了多米诺骨牌效应。”

“What I hope is that this is a wake-up call,” Jambeck said. “People should feel empowered that their choices do matter.”

“我希望这是一个警钟，”贾贝克说。 “人们应该要意识到自己的选择是至关重要的。”