A Chinese ban on most foreign recycling material is leaving some Canadian municipalities with stockpiles of papers and plastics, much of which may eventually end up in the dump. 
 
 The ban is also driving down the revenues cities make off their recyclables because the competition to find a company able to take the materials is stiff. 
 
 China used to be the main recipient of the world's recyclable plastics and papers but has now stopped accepting almost all foreign materials, leaving Canadian cities in the lurch. 
 
 Although the ban didn't take full effect until Dec. 31, many Chinese companies stopped accepting foreign recycling materials months ago, leaving some cities with stockpiles of flattened cardboard and crushed plastic without anywhere to send it. 
 
 Matthew Keliher, manager of solid waste for Halifax, said three-quarters of his city's recyclables used to go to China. He said the city has found new markets for hard plastics and papers but film plastics — grocery bags and food storage bags and wraps — have proved harder to sell. 
 
 Three hundred tonnes of film plastic amassed in a Halifax warehouse since August is now being sent to the dump. 
 
 Calgary, which used to send all of its paper recyclables and half of its plastics to China, has amassed 5,000 tonnes of material over the last few months that it can't find anyone else to take. It hasn't yet decided what to do with it. 
 
 While Canada has some domestic recycling companies, Christina Seidel, executive director of the Recycling Council of Alberta, said those are almost exclusively for the high-grade plastics like milk jugs and juice bottles. 
 
 "That's a really high-quality material," she said. "Everyone wants those. There aren't huge fans of the low grade plastics." 
 
 Sixty per cent of recyclables in Quebec used to go to China. No more. 
 
 Recycling Council of Alberta executive director Christina Seidel says that while Canada has some domestic recycling companies, those are almost exclusively for high-grade plastics like milk jugs and juice bottles. (Rebecca Kelly/CBC) 
 
 Tired of tonnes of recyclables contaminated with unusable garbage arriving in its ports and intent on using up its own domestically-produced recyclables, China slammed the door shut to most foreign materials. 
 
 Indonesia, Thailand and India are among the countries still accepting foreign recyclables but competition to get them to accept product is stiff. 
 
 It's so tight that Keliher said Halifax is afraid to say where it's now sending its recyclables for fear another city will hear of it and jump in to push the competition for that outlet even higher. 
 
 "Halifax won't be disclosing the locations of any of our outlets," he said. 
 
 "The recycling market was ruthless before the Chinese ban came in and, now that half that market has dried up and the supply is just overwhelming, it's even more ruthless to get our material out." 
 
 Halifax used to make $2.1 million a year on the sale of recyclables, with $1.6 million of that coming from China. 
 
 Derek Angove, director of processing and resource management for Toronto's Solid Waste Management Services, said his city did not directly export to China. But it has now entered into longer-term contracts with Canadian outlets to protect Toronto from being crowded out when cities left in the lurch by the Chinese ban come calling with their products. 
 
 These are bales of plastic bags from cities like Halifax. (Mary-Catherine McIntosh/CBC) 
 
 He said Toronto has already seen the price it gets for paper and plastic-coated materials drop and, unless China can be convinced to re-open its doors to recyclables, he believes the prices are going to keep going down. 
 
 Seidel said Canada needs to move nationwide to the extended producer responsibility system in place across British Columbia, which puts the onus on the producers of the materials to pay for and ensure the recycling of its products. 
 
 In B.C., that has led to a larger domestic market for recyclables and less pressure on municipalities to pay for the programs. ||||| LONDON — Ever since China announced last year that it no longer wanted to be the “world’s garbage dump,” recycling about half of the globe’s plastics and paper products, Western nations have been puzzling over what to do when the ban went into effect, which it did on Jan. 1. 
 
 The answer, to date, in Britain at least, is nothing. At least one waste disposal site in London is already seeing a buildup of plastic recyclables and has had to pay to have some of it removed. 
 
 Similar backups have been reported in Canada, Ireland, Germany and several other European nations, while tons of rubbish is piling up in port cities like Hong Kong. 
 
 Steve Frank, of Pioneer Recycling in Oregon, owns two plants that collect and sort 220,000 tons of recyclable materials each year. A majority of it was until recently exported to China.
– China has declared that it's no longer accepting "foreign garbage"—which has left a lot of countries, including the US, wondering what to do with it. As part of a drive to reduce pollution, the country stopped accepting 24 kinds of waste on Jan. 1, including mixed paper and the kinds of plastic used in bottles and bags, and brought in higher standards for other materials, the New York Times reports. The policy was announced in July last year. Some Chinese companies stopped accepting foreign waste months ago, but authorities in some countries were still unprepared for the change as this year began, meaning recyclable waste is being sent to landfills or stored in warehouses until officials can find a place to send it. China used to take around half the world's exports of recyclable paper, plastic, and metals. Countries including India, Indonesia, and Thailand are still accepting waste exports, but authorities say they don't have the capacity to replace China and there's a lot of competition among exporters, the CBC reports. Simon Ellin, chief executive of Britain's Recycling Association trade group, tells the Times that dealing with the buildup of paper and plastic is causing "tough times" in the industry—but China's move will hopefully reduce the amount of trash being produced. "What's happened is that the final link in the supply chain has turned around and said: 'No, we're not going to take this poor-quality stuff anymore. Keep it for yourself,'" he says. (Britain may introduce a "latte levy" to reduce waste.)