Plastic Waste Trade Watch
January 2023
|
|
Plastic Waste Trade Watch is a monthly review of information on the international trade in plastic waste. It is produced by Basel Action Network's (BAN) Plastic Waste Transparency Project, which undertakes campaigns, networking, research, and statistical analysis of the trade in plastic waste. The project also maintains the Plastic Waste Transparency Hub on the BAN website, which serves as an overall clearinghouse for News, Data, Campaigns, and Resources.
To join or sign up new members to the Plastic Waste Trade Watch, click here.
|
|
Sungai Petani, Kedah, Malaysia. Firefighters battle a blaze at an early morning blaze at a recycling facility, which housed both paper waste and plastic waste. Photo Credit: Pasukan Bomba Sukarela Bedong Kedah
|
|
Latest Export Data
Key Messages: E.U. countries, who are reportedly shutting down domestic plastic recycling operations due to high energy costs, are significantly increasing plastic waste exports to non-OECD countries in Asia.
Other OECD countries are likewise the major pathways for plastic waste exports to non-OECD countries, while promoting the “circular economy of plastics” mythology via unsustainable recycling in developing countries.
-
Total E.U. exports to non-OECD countries rose to 55.9 million kg/month in October 2022. Exports to non-OECD countries:
- Germany: 20.7 million kg/month (November 2022)
- Netherlands: 15.7 million kg/month (October 2022)
- Spain: 9.7 million kg/month (October 2022)
- Belgium: 7.8 million kg/month (October 2022)
- Italy: 7.8 million kg/month (October 2022)
- Japan exported 37.3 million kg/month in November 2022 to non-OECD countries.
- Total U.K. exports to all countries were 40.7 million kg/month in November 2022 with 90% shipped to OECD countries, including 25% to Turkey. U.K. exports to Asia could be routed through the Netherlands to non-OECD countries.
- U.S. exports were 12.4 million kg/month to non-OECD countries, 7.3 million kg/month to Mexico, and 0.9 million kg/month Turkey (both OECD countries) in November 2022.
|
|
Full-year 2021 plastic waste export data has now been published in government trade databases. We have posted 2021 annual summaries – check here for these summaries and the latest monthly data.
|
|
Basel Implementation News |
|
Contamination Levels
The Basel Convention's 2019 Plastic Waste Amendments utilize the term "almost free from contamination" as one criterion for whether the plastic waste shipment will be uncontrolled. This term has not been given an international quantitative value, leaving the Parties to define it on a national basis. Enclosed are the known levels adopted by certain countries to date. If readers know of other country interpretations, please let us know.
|
|
“Europe cannot continue to export its waste challenges to third countries with devastating consequences on their climate, environment, and human health. We live in one world and exporting pollution to third countries will have a global impact. We cannot remain idle in the face of what our actions are meaning to the health and human rights of people living in developing countries.”
-- Labour MEP Cyrus Engerer, on the revised Waste Shipment Regulation adopted by European Parliament, which would ban plastic waste exports outside the E.U.
|
|
“Plastic waste is one of the major environmental issues of our age – as a visit to many beaches or inland beauty spots will show. But what’s good for our environment could also have been good for the economy as well. Our recommendation to ban plastic waste exports by 2027 was partly aimed to help develop a multimillion-pound plastic waste recycling industry in the U.K., supporting hundreds of jobs.”
-- Sir Robert Goodwill, MP, Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, in response to the U.K. government rejecting his committee’s recommendation to ban all plastic waste exports under industry pressure.
|
|
Euro-Parliament proposes a ban on exports of all plastic wastes
In its first plenary session of 2023, the European Parliament adopted its negotiating position for further talks with the 27 E.U. member state governments on a proposal to update the Waste Shipment Regulation. With the wide support of 93% of MEPs, the amendments proposed would immediately ban even non-hazardous plastic waste exports to developing countries and after four years to OECD countries as well. Further, the MEPs called for eliminating a legally questionable double standard which would allow trade between E.U. countries to circumvent the notification and consent procedures required by the Basel Convention.
Next, the proposal will proceed to the European Council represented by the Environment Ministers of all 27 E.U. countries for their first reading.
Ahead of the European Parliament vote, a delegation from the Turkish trade and environment ministries discussed the then-proposal with the European Commission. The Turkish delegation emphasized that the prevention of illegal waste shipment and the damage to the environment is a shared goal, and that while these wastes are useful as raw materials in industry, the country does not want to receive anymore.
Government study doubts value of chemical recycling
A new study by a 12-member Department of Energy team explored the benefits and trade-offs of different methods of plastics recycling. The researchers focused on methods that could be considered “closed loop” solutions, where waste is turned back into feedstock to make new plastics. However, the researchers did study pyrolysis and gasification, which are often used to turn plastics into fuel or other chemical feedstocks, and found that only 1 to 14 percent of the original material was retained as plastic. They also found that these processes’ economic and environmental metrics are currently 10 to 100 times higher than using virgin plastics. Mechanical recycling continues to outperform all other recycling and disposal options both economically and with regard to emissions but still faces many significant challenges. A recent study by Beyond Plastics showed the U.S.’s plastic recycling rate to be 6% in 2021. Recently, negotiators debated text on chemical recycling for inclusion in the Basel Convention's Plastic Waste Technical Guidelines, as many governments worldwide seek clarity on whether such treatment can be claimed as environmentally sound management.
|
|
Danone sued over plastic megapollution
Three environmental groups have brought action against the French food corporation Danone for failing to sufficiently reduce its plastic footprint. ClientEarth, Surfrider Foundation Europe, and Zero Waste France are suing Danone under France’s 2017 “Duty of Vigilance” law, which requires that large companies assess and prevent the impacts their operations (including their supply chain) have on the environment and human rights with a “vigilance plan”. The groups said they received an insufficient response when they reached out to the company in September, when they gave the company an opportunity to rectify its plan. In a response to the lawsuit, Danone emphasized the need for legally binding international treaty on plastic pollution, as an end to the problem could not come from one single company. Danone used 750,000 tonnes of plastic in 2021, an increase over 2020, and operated in 120 different countries. |
|
U.K. government rejects plastic waste export ban
Going against the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) Committee’s recommendation from November, the U.K. government has announced that it would not move forward with a total ban on plastic waste exports. The government cited “legitimate” exports’ large role in the management of plastic waste, which the committee report found to be the solution for around 60% of the U.K.'s plastic packaging waste. However, it did acknowledge Greenpeace’s 2021 report on U.K. waste dumped and burned in Turkey while defending plastic waste export to the country, stating that Turkey’s plastic recycling sector is estimated to be twice the size of the U.K.’s. Further, the government response emphasizes some future actions it will take, like a consultation on a levy on “green list” wastes to fund export regulation and continued advocacy for strong penalties for waste crime. This news comes after industry groups spoke out against the proposed ban, including one representing the Refuse-Derived Fuel industry, and after a report that the government has invested more than £18.5 million over the last four years in chemical recycling research with dubious results. Regardless of this decision, the U.K. is still committed to ban plastic waste exports to non-OECD countries, though they only account for about 20% of exports in 2020.
Canadian exporter must pay shipper for rejected waste
Golden Trust Trading, a materials exporting company based in British Columbia, must pay international shipping company Hapag-Lloyd $4.3 million Canadian dollars for costs incurred while 33 shipping containers of plastic waste sat in a Thai port for over two years. According to court documents, the containers were filled with PET, PP, and PVC film bales and were rejected by the Thai government in January 2019, after a change in Thailand’s environmental import standards. The containers then remained in the port for 782 days before Hapag-Lloyd was able to re-export 30 of the 33 containers. Yang Ming, another shipping company, also brought a case against Golden Trust Trading in March 2021 for over $1 million in fees for 39 containers of plastic scrap which sat unclaimed in Thai ports, later being seized by Thailand Customs after learning the bills of lading misrepresented the contents. The parties in this case were ordered into mediation as of November 2022. Last year, the shipping line CMA-CGM responded to the NGO-led Shipping Lines Campaign and ended all plastic waste shipments on its vessels, standing out as the only worldwide shipping company to completely reject plastic waste shipments anywhere on earth.
|
|
The Atlas of Plastic Waste |
|
The Atlas of Plastic Waste is a collaboration between the Basel Action Network (BAN) and graduate students Matthew Gordon (Yale University) and Anna Papp (Columbia University). The project aims to harness human discoveries and inputs from satellite and computer technology to identify sites around the world where plastic waste ends up in the terrestrial environment. The goal is to raise awareness worldwide of the unsustainable characteristics of plastic and the large degree it has become an unwanted geographic feature of our collective landscape and Earth's biosphere.
We are soliciting submissions from each of you for the locations of plastic waste dumps to begin the creation of a global database of these sites. If you know of a major dump site (at least the equivalent volume of waste as a large city bus), please submit the information HERE.
We will use satellite data to view the user submitted dump locations this data will, in turn, refine the satellite’s algorithm to find more sites independently/automatically. The Atlas will ultimately contain data based on your submissions to our entry portal, as well as verified new locations discovered by satellite.
Help us create and build this Atlas by inputting known sites in your part of the world and likewise tell your friends to join in from their corners of the world. Together we can make this Atlas a comprehensive global snapshot and help the public and governments better understand the severity of the plastic malignancy on the Earth today.
|
|
Plastic Waste Transparency Project |
|
|
|
|
|
|
