NewsTracker Answers for week of June 03, 2019

Q: The Philippines last week loaded 69 shipping containers of rotting municipal waste onto a ship bound for Vancouver, Canada. The garbage was part of 2013 shipment labeled as recyclable plastics, but it contained all kinds of other trash including soiled diapers. Where is the Philippines?

Circle the area on this map


Q: Philippines is the latest Southeast Asian nation to protest that developed nations are using the region as a waste dump. What other Southeast Asian nation said last week it was sending back 3,000 tons of waste back to the senders?

A. China

B. Japan

C. Malaysia

D. South Korea


C. Southeast Asia is a region south of China and Japan, east of India and north of Austraila. It includes the nations of Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Singapore, the Andaman and Nicobar islands of India, Indonesia, the Philippines, East Timor, Brunei, Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands.


Q: A wave of waste from wealthy nations swept into Southeast Asia after which nation recently refused to buy any recycled plastic scrap that wasn’t 99.5 percent pure of other waste?

A. China

B. Japan

C. India

D. Brazil


A. As China grows wealthier, its people grow more worried about their environment. After it banned impure plastic waste imports last year, recycling bales piled up in wealthy nations like the United States, Britain and Australia. That waste soon overwhelmed recycling plants in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia.


Q: When you recycle your plastic and paper trash or give away old clothes, the vast majority of it shipped overseas and sold to recycling operations in poorer countries. Where does these cast-offs of rich nations end up?

A. Africa

B. Asia

C. South America

D. All of the above


D. The global waste trade generally involves shipping waste including toxic material from the wealthy, developed, northern nations to much poorer nations in the southern parts of the globe.


Q: Like many of the nations recycling waste, the Philippines was once ruled by the wealthier nations which are now exporting trash. Which of these nations did NOT rule the Philippines?

A. Japan

B. Netherlands

C. Spain

D. United States


B. Spain ruled the Philippines from the 1500s until 1898, when it ceded the islands to the United States after the Spanish-American War. During World War II, Japan invaded the islands in 1941 and ruled until it was defeated in 1945. The United States officially recognized the Philippines as an independent nation on July 4, 1946.