China Vows to Crack Down on Illegal Garbage Imports

FOSHAN, CHINA - FEBRUARY 01: Workers clean a river which has been polluted by chemical wastes from incinerators on February 1, 2007 at Lianjiao, Foshan city, Guangdong province of China. Following recent reports in a British newspaper that Britain disposed of 1.9 million tonnes of garbage in China every year, the local government has shut down all the thousands of plastic waste collecting and processing workshops and companys, though most of them have no responsibilities on this. Lianjiao, n industrial zone in Foshan's Nanhai District has become a major domestic plastic waste collecting and processing center since the 1970s. Lianjiao processes 200,000 tonnes of plastic waste every year, 80 per cent from other parts of China, but the rest imported from other countries, Chinese officials said. . (Photo by Cancan Chu/Getty Images)