Coal has long been China’s “black gold,” supplying over half of the nation’s electricity. Yet as coal’s energy share decreases due to domestic action to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, a new coal industry is emerging. In China’s arid northwest, eight plants are pulverizing coal chunks and “cooking” coal powder into something more valuable than power—or maybe even gold. These coal conversion plants, soon numbering over 20, churn out chemicals to produce plastic.

Usually after dinner, Mr. Ma would take off his shirt, shut the door, and begin work making plastic pellets from scrap. But tonight, he sits in his darkened yard staring at two SUV-sized plastic processing machines and a bundle of colorful scrap plastic. No lights are on, no machines grind, and no familiar theme song of CCTV-1 plays in the background. Walking through other villages in Wen’an County, more men meander around their yards filled with the same idle processing machines and mini-mountains of scrap plastic. Most have never studied English, but they are fluent in the language of plastics, sprinkling words like ABS, PP, and PVC into their conversations. They are the owners of small plastic scrap recycling workshops that were once booming—but are now silent.

At the September 2019 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Climate Summit, the U.S. delegation, under the shadow of intended withdrawal from Paris, did not volunteer a speaker. Attention instead focused on China. As the world’s largest carbon emitter, China was poised to assert leadership on the climate crisis.  However, perhaps lacking the sibling rivalry pressure that brought the U.S. and China together in 2014 on a joint climate agreement, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi offered no new commitments: no carbon tax, no increased investment in renewables, and no announcement to set a more ambitious coal consumption cap.

Once a designated “recycling bin” for the world’s post-consumer scrap, China said no more when it instituted a ban on scrap imports in 2018. Countries that previously sent bulks of waste to China, such as plastic, paper, and electronics, are grappling for solutions in the face of China’s “Operation National Sword.” For example, U.S. municipalities that shipped 4,000 shipping containers per day in 2016 to China are now investing in incinerators or cutting recycling programs altogether. 

“If you go to some Taiwan beaches, you can see snow,” said Chieh-Shen (Jason) Hu, Ocean Initiative Coordinator for Taiwan’s Society of Wilderness, a 6,000-member organization similar to Sierra Club. Hu was referring to pervasive Styrofoam marine debris from western Taiwan’s oldest industry, oyster aquaculture.

With on average one pangolin poached from the wild every five minutes, this scaly anteater is the most highly trafficked animal in the world. Despite an international trade ban and millions of dollars of education campaigns, the killing of the pangolin for food and medicines continues unabated. In particular, the use of its scales in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a large driver of demand.

“That ain’t no mountain,” said Jennifer L. Turner, the Director of the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum, in response to a picture of a pile of phosphogypsum waste just outside a farming village. She moderated a recent event on the development of environmental law and enforcement in China cohosted by the Environmental Law Institute and The Wilson Center. Since 2013, when the picture was taken, the mountain has grown, she said. She put the image up because many people hear about soil pollution, or illegal dumping, and picture something small. “You don’t picture a mountain towering over a village,” Turner said.

Our world is drowning in plastic pollution with nearly 8 million tons of single-use plastic and some 700,000 tons of abandoned fishing gear leaking into marine ecosystems each year. Plastic waste endangers marine species. For example, animals become entangled in abandoned nets. Marine birds, fish, whales and sharks are sickened or die when they accidentally ingest plastic. According to a 2017 study, around 90 percent of single-use plastic that pollutes our oceans comes from 10 rivers, 6 of which are in China. No Avenger superheroes can make this problem go away; rather the world needs heroic efforts by consumers, businesses, and governments to curb these plastic leaks. Encouragingly, China’s war on pollution has catalyzed new bottom-up activism and top-down policies that are starting to spur action to reduce plastic leakage.