[205guy]

This isn't true either. The US was shipping badly sorted recycling (aka half-trash) to other countries because return shipping to Asia is dirt-cheap (aka trade imbalance). Other countries were sorting the recyclables with miserable labor and dumping our trash byproduct due to lax environmental laws in said countries. Recently, they haven't been as interested in this deal.

[redis_mlc]

1) The US press followed this for decades.

The Chinese govt. allowed trash shipments for a long time, but nobody in business wanted to really do the trash shipments because they slowed down the return trip.

Finally the Chinese government realized banning the shipments was an easy way to improve air quality in China, since often trash mountains are burned to isolate metals.

2) There's an erroneous belief that we do recycling in the US. Aside from vehicle recycling, about 99% effective, most trash is landfilled since there's no way for private companies to make money on the trash stream.

If you read local newspapers, there's often an article on the municipal council being asked for $1 million payments from recyclers, so dumping is chosen instead.