China’s Block on Trash Imports Forces Australia to Bury Recycling

China’s move at the start of the year to halt imports of other nations’ junk is causing headaches worldwide. A city council in Australia is now set to be the first Down Under to remove the mounting stockpiles of recyclable commodities by burying them.

“The national recycling system broke sooner than we expected,” Andrew Antoniolli, the mayor of Ipswich, said in a statement. While it aims to call tenders to bid on waste-to-energy projects later this year, for now the city near Brisbane will send unwanted bottles, newspapers, cans and plastic containers from its 200,000 residents to landfill.