Throughout recent years, the industrial sectors of both India and China have seen substantial growth. However, a staggering majority of scrap metal from the United States is shipped to China, as opposed to India. In the year 2000, China was responsible for the majority of all the world's scrap metal and paper imports. This is due to a variety of factors, including shipping costs. While cheap labor and relaxed regulation standards do play a part in the overwhelmingly sized industry of Chinese scrap metal and paper imports, these were not the most important factors. Although labor is cheaper in India and more pricey in China, the Chinese shipping price is much more cost-effective than the price for comparable transportation services in India. This lower shipping price is due to the backhaul phenomenon. The term 'backhaul' is defined as the return trip a container ship makes after it has deposited it's cargo at the primary destination. Since this is a trip that must be made regardless of whether or not the containers are full or empty (of cargo), shipping companies can charge discounted rates. While these discounted rates are attractive to the shipping service's potential customers, they are even more beneficial to the shipping service company. Since the container ships will be making this trip no matter what, the goods can be shipped with virtually no added transportation cost. This phenomenon is especially important to the Chinese imports industry. Since China is known to export much more than it imports (90% to 10%), it capitalizes on backhaul by importing extremely high volumes of both scrap metal and paper/cardboard products. In the words of Adam Minter, the "U.S. demand for Chinese goods means that a paper mill in southern China can outcompete a Chicago area paper mill for a shipping container of old newspapers in Los Angeles. That's the power of the backhaul - and American demand for Chinese-manufactured goods."
Throughout history there have been countless complications and issues that have sprung up as a result of globalization. In 'Junkyard Planet', when discussing the backhaul phenomenon, the author notes that backhaul is important for global waste reduction. Considering the exportation of food and other goods from India to other countries in the Middle East, the containers are usually empty on their return trip. This lack of backhaul is because the Middle East doesn't have anything in particular to fill these empty containers with. This correlates to the amount of waste within Middle Eastern countries. In fact, those in the Middle East are much more wasteful than Americans, per capita. Globalization has promoted worldwide connections, but can often produce extra waste and avoid focus on localization.
Modern transportation is easily relatable to the themes in "Why Did Human History Unfold Differently On Different Continents For The Last 13,000 Years?" by Jared Diamond. In Diamond's text, he states that the varying technological levels of cultures across the world are what eventually contributed to the colonization of America and other areas. In today's time period, modern transportation technology is what separates some civilizations from others. While some countries are obviously much more successful than others in terms of transportation, the societies that lack this technology are seemingly not as prosperous.
