For years the smell of melted plastic permeated the Chinese village of Luwang, where dozens of workshops processed imported waste. Now the village is eerily quiet and relatively odourless, caught up in a crackdown on recycling of imported plastic that is causing waste to pile up at ports in the US and Europe.

“We used to import plastic rubbish from Britain?.?.?.?but now customs won’t let it in,” said Zheng Min, who was guarding the village’s government office in east China’s Shandong province. Government inspectors swept through the village last May, he added, shuttering its recycling companies.

“All our development has been dependent on plastic. Some people made millions from recycling and developed large companies. Now it’s all gone. I never expected the government to take such measures,” he added.