The World Daily
Recyclable plastics from UK burned in Turkey

Plastic sent for recycling in Turkey found dumped and burned in Adana province. Photo:PA

 

By Patryk Krych | The World Daily | MAY 17th 2021

 

An investigation headed by Greenpeace has found that the United Kingdom’s plastics, sent over to Turkey for recycling purposes, were in fact being haphazardly dumped and burned, or in worse cases even left to further pollute the oceans.

Well over half of the plastics the government claims are being recycled appropriately are in reality being sent over to other countries. The UK has been infamous for paying other countries to accept their garbage exports for a long while now, especially to countries that don’t actually have the required infrastructure to correctly recycle.

Among the latest of these countries is Turkey. According to Greenpeace investigators, many of the plastics sent over to the country are not being recycled as they were designed to be, but are instead being burned, left to pile up, or accidentally allowed to slip into the already polluted oceans.

This is a particular point of contention, with between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes of plastic already entering the ocean annually, according to 2015 figures published in the journal Science. A number that hasn’t improved since then.

“As this new evidence shows, plastic waste coming from the UK to Turkey is an environmental threat, not an economic opportunity,” said the biodiversity projects lead at Greenpeace Mediterranean, Nihan Temiz Ataş. “Uncontrolled imports of plastic waste do nothing but increase the problems that exist in Turkey’s own recycling system.”

In 2020, somewhere around 688,000 tonnes of plastic packaging were exported out of the UK (an average of 1.8m kilos) where only 486,000 tonnes were appropriately recycled within the country. This shows that the UK is responsible for more plastic exports into other countries than it is for its own recycling processes.

Before Turkey, China had been the primary place to which the UK had sent the majority of its garbage. Since China’s 2017 import ban on waste, however, the UK had decided to look for other places to dump their garbage in, rather than take care of it themselves – that place has become Turkey.

Turkey’s imports of UK waste have seen significant growth from 12,000 tonnes in 2016 to 209,642 tonnes in 2020. This covers about 30% of all the UK’s plastic waste exports. The Greenpeace investigators found plenty of plastics from British supermarkets treated inappropriately, some of which had also been found on the Mediterranean coast. 

 

As a result of this revelation, Greenpeace have called upon the UK to ban the export of plastics into countries that are not members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as well as the export of mix-plastic (recyclable and non-recyclable) to OECD countries like Turkey.

The UK isn’t the only offender however, as other countries in Europe have also begun to make Turkey their primary spot for waste exports. According to the rules of both the EU and the UK, it is illegal to export plastic waste to countries that cannot recycle it. The recycling rates of Turkey are the lowest of any OECD country, however, resting at about 12%.

Ataş added: “As far as we can see from the data and the field, we continue to be Europe’s largest plastic waste dump.”

Turkey had to clamp down firmly on these imports as they were recently getting out of hand, and have issued bans on certain types of plastics being imported into the country since January. This decision may have had too little impact however, as UK trade data shows that the amount of plastics sent to Turkey in February of 2021 was 30,300 tonnes, which is double the amount sent last year in February of 2020.

Interpol added that the large amounts of garbage and plastics being sent out this way to Turkey, as well as other countries like Malaysia and Poland, was having a negative effect on the illegal trade of waste.

 

By Patryk Krych | © The World Daily 2021