Drink bottled water, kill a Chinese child

But the crazy thing is that a significant portion of 'recycled' plastic products ends up getting shipped to China where environmental regulations are looser and workers' rights are virtually nonexistent. Though some plastic is able to be recycled here, much of it is too environmentally and economically costly, and so it is loaded onto empty barges on their way back to China. The fact that soaring Chinese demand for petroleum products enables companies to pay extraordinary prices for plastic in virtually any form just exacerbates this reality. Once in China, these products are sorted and melted down (amidst ghastly toxic fumes) by workers earning about $1.50 a day.