> What "dirty jobs" is China, and now apparently other countries, being purportedly forced to do?

In past decades, we had this system that China manufactures goods, they are shipped in ships to US and Europe, and because US and Europe don't manufacture much anything, often the ships would travel back empty. Western countries started to legislate mandated plastic waste recycling, but didn't really have facilities to actually recycle. So we would ship our plastic waste to China, with a promise that it will be recycled. Legislators were happy. In practice, plastic waste is not so easy to recycle, and was often just dumped somewhere in Asia.

In 2017, China stopped accepting imports of plastic waste.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_waste_import_ban

Some countries like Sweden, burn their household waste in combined heat and power generation plants. If you incinerate in sufficiently high temperatures, and have exhaust filters, you can do in cleanly without causing air pollution.

https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/blog/turning-waste-energy-...