No matter how faithfully you’ve been tossing your plastic waste into the recycling bin, the reality is that very little of it is getting recycled. For decades, US cities and trash companies exported much of their plastic to China, which was desperate for raw materials. But in 2018, as part of a domestic crackdown on pollution, China banned imports of dirty foreign recyclables. As massive amounts of poor-quality recyclables were piling up at ports and warehouses, Sierra declared the US recycling system trash. America and other waste exporters scrambled to find new dumping grounds for their garbage, including Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, which