THIS JANUARY, China declared war against yang laji $($foreign garbage$).$ After decades of purchasing recycling that was cluttered with undesirable objects, such as greasy pizza boxes, the country set strict cleanliness standards for the material it purchases. The announcement sent the global industry into a frenzy: for decades, China had been the end market for more than half of the world$$s plastic and paper, which are used as raw materials in Chinese building and manufacturing. Many of the Canadian outfitters that relied on China were left stranded because they couldn$$t guarantee the quality of their product.

The effects were immediate: exports of plastics and scraps to China fell from $6,700$ tonnes in January $2017$ to $578$ one year later. Paper$-$scrap exports fell from $53,000$ to $15,800$ tonnes. Some of that leftover material is finding its way to other foreign markets, mostly in southeast Asia and India. Some of it is ending up in landfills. Halifax has resorted to burning its plastics in waste$-$to$-$energy facilities. And, as of this May, Calgary was still storing more than $7,500$ tonnes of paper. At that time, the city also hadn$$t been able to find buyers for $1,000$ tonnes of clamshell plastics$$the little containers berries come in$.$They$$re laminated and covered in adhesive labels,$$ says Sharon Howland, Calgary$$s leader of program management for waste and recycling. $$Nobody wants them.$$

China$$s ban forced many of us to confront the realities of a broken system. Canada is good at touting its green conscience; sacrificing comfort, convenience, and habit is a different matter. Yes, Justin Trudeau signed the Paris climate agreement in $2016,$ promising to reduce greenhouse$-$gas emissions by $30$ percent from $2005$ levels by $2030.$ But still, road pollution in the country is rising. Whenever gas prices drop, oil$-$sands projects slow down$$which could be seen as environmental progress. But we also then buy bigger, less$-$fuel$-$efficient cars. And Canada is lagging behind most other industrialized countries when it comes to electric$-$vehicle purchases.

The same problem can be seen with the blue box: we cling to our good intentions, but we seldom carry them out. We have always produced far more garbage than we could offload to end markets. Increasingly, our MRFs$$and our streets, streams, and oceans$$are overflowing with waste.

Saxe$$s Beyond the Blue Box report was presented to Ontario$$s legislature last fall, as the province was considering a sea change in its approach to garbage: a $$circular economy$$ in which industry would be responsible for products$$ post$-$consumer life and manufacturing would become a closed loop in which as much as possible is reused, in perpetuity, to create new products. But while Ontario passed the Waste Free Ontario Act in $2016,$ it provides only a guiding framework for this hypothetical future, with very few details and no concrete plan of action. $$It$$s certainly a great ambition to imagine this path forward,$$ Saxe says. $$But it will clearly be very, very difficult.$$ The act$$s success is entirely dependent on regulations yet to come, making it$,$ at this point, little more than good intentions. Today, with a premier intent on rolling back the previous government$$s environmental initiatives $($also including the province$$s cap$-$and$-$trade carbon$-$pricing measures$)$ a waste$-$free future looks doubtful.

Recycling alone will likely never be enough to make up for the garbage we produce. The fight, thirty years ago, to keep Canadians$$ fizzy drinks in refillable glass bottles was a good thing to do all along. Making coffee the old$-$fashioned way is better than cycling through millions of single$-$use coffee pods. And yet most people who$$ve spent their careers in waste management continue to encourage recycling$$it$$s better than nothing. And Canadians love it because it$$s something each and every one of us can control: sort, clean, and carry to the curb. Summarize this