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A man in a vest stands next to a wall of baled paper products, about 12 feet tall and several hundred feet long.

Mountains of US recycling pile up as China restricts imports

January 1, 2018Economics

Much of the world’s recycling gets shipped to China for processing. But starting Jan. 1, China is enacting much tougher standards for the purity of recycling imports, standards most American, and European, recyclers simply can’t meet. And that has recycling piling up throughout the United States.

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