Plastic Waste Trade Watch
June 2022
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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.
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Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Workers look on as others summit a plastic bottle mountain at a recycling facility north of Dar es Salaam, the owner of which claims to export around 400 tons of plastic each month to Vietnam, Turkey, or Ukraine. Photo credit: Alex Clapp
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The Basel Plastic Waste Amendments were enacted on January 1, 2021. They were designed to reduce the flow of dirty and mixed plastic wastes, particularly to developing countries. As a result, plastic waste shipments were initially reduced in January 2021. However, the full year 2021 data and first 2022 monthly data shows that OECD countries continue to flood non-OECD countries with plastic waste in 2021 and 2022.
Major Pathways of Plastic Waste Export to Non-OECD Countries:
- The Netherlands exported 23.3 million kg/month in March 2022 to non-OECD countries.
- Japan exported 51.1 million kg/month in March 2022 to non-OECD countries.
- Australia exported 6.1 million kg/month in March 2022 to non-OECD countries.
- U.S. exported 16.9 million kg/month in April 2022 to non-OECD countries.
U.S. plastic waste exports to Mexico remained high in April 2022 at 5.9 million kg/month. California was the largest state exporter with 20% of plastic waste exports to non-OECD countries, and New Jersey was the second largest, accounting for 18%.
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Full year 2021 plastic waste export data has now been published in government trade databases. We have posted annual summaries – check here for the latest data.
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Basel Implementation News |
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Basel Convention COP15 / Plastics Developments
The 15th Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention took place from June 6-17th in Geneva. It was the first face-to-face meeting of the Basel Convention Parties since their landmark decision to begin controlling the international trade in plastic wastes.
Side Event on Lack of Plastic Waste Trade Compliance
While a review of that decision was not on the agenda of this year's meeting, BAN, together with numerous environmental organizations from around the world, issued a delegate alert and conducted a side event providing a report card on global compliance with the new rules, in force since January 1, 2021. In summary, BAN and others presented evidence of obvious illegal exports from readily available COMTRADE data, including evidence of the illegal exports of PVC scrap from the United States.
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Operation Can Opener
They also related how they had openly queried five different Asian country officials from India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia with reliable data regarding incoming shipments of plastic waste coming to their countries from the U.S. These countries cannot legally accept Basel controlled plastic waste (such as PVC, contaminated, or mixed plastics) from the U.S., a non-Party. The lack of response from these countries, having received such good intelligence in advance of the shipments’ arrival and allowing time for search and seizure, was very disappointing. It further indicates a lack of diligent enforcement of the new plastic waste controls. India, for one, was a country that did not communicate with BAN until Toxics Link and BAN reached out to the Times of India. Then suddenly, the Ministry of Environment and Forests claimed they were on the case. Indonesia and Vietnam have reported nothing so far, and Malaysia has claimed they were searching the shipments but have not yet reported on the results.
Plastic Waste Guideline
On other plastic matters, work on the Basel Convention's Plastic Waste Technical Guidelines, despite lofty hopes of being finished at this meeting, did not come close to completion. Some improvements to the document were made, but over the course of the two weeks, the NGOs were not able to remove references to recycling technologies that are not to be considered environmentally sound management, such as chemical recycling and burning plastics as refuse-derived fuel. However, on those issues, IPEN and GAIA were able to conduct powerful side-events and actions. Indeed, the theme of the meeting fostered by the IPEN team was "Chemical Recycling is a Unicorn" - a fantasy, a mythic creature - invented as a solution by the fossil fuel / chemicals industry. The information provided on these subjects was well received by delegates, and many seeds of doubt on these "management" methods were sown. As for the Guidelines, work on these will continue between sessions, at the upcoming meeting of the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG), slated for next February in Geneva, and at the 16th Conference of the Parties, slated for the Bahamas in June of 2023.
Swiss-Ghana Amendment Passes on non-Hazardous e-wastes
The highlight of the meeting was clearly the adoption of a new Amendment, originally proposed by Switzerland and Ghana, to control all electronic waste that is not considered hazardous as a waste for special consideration (requiring at a minimum prior informed consent procedures for legal export). This is vital for the issue of plastic waste trade because there are large volumes of "computer plastics" which, when part of used electronic equipment, might fall outside of other plastic listings such as Y48 (mixed and contaminated) plastics. BAN has since conducted a webinar on the recent e-waste developments at the Basel Convention.
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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.
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“In previous years, we have strongly fought against the import of hazardous wastes from countries who regarded our country as their dumpsites. Ratifying the Basel Ban Amendment will protect the Philippines from being a destination of hazardous wastes again,”
-- Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) of the Philippines Acting Secretary Jim O. Sampulna, urging the incoming administration to ratify the Basel Ban Amendment.
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It is never good optics to pretend to care for the environment but take part in dumping the wastes from one corner of the earth to another. Developed countries (from which these wastes originate) must know where their wastes end up. Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, and other shipping companies are the middlemen in this chain. It is time to break the chain to allow for better domestic waste management and zero waste practices and to deal with our own waste. Sign this petition to call on Maersk to follow shipping line giant CMA-CGM and ban plastic waste shipments from being transported on their ships.
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Groups urge Philippine President-elect to ratify Ban Amendment
Multiple NGOs are calling on the President-elect of the Philippines, Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr., to ratify the Basel Ban Amendment during his first 100 days in office. Their calls come on the third anniversary of the re-export in 2019 of 65 containers containing 2,400 tons of Canadian waste that had been intercepted by officials six years earlier, beginning a long legal battle to repatriate the waste. President-elect Marcos, then a senator, filed a resolution that pushed for the investigation of the dumping of Canadian trash into the country and for the institution of measures to protect public health and the environment against toxic and hazardous materials. The Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, responsible for these containers’ return, has also called for the Ban Amendment’s ratification.
Single-use plastic ban, weak waste export enforcement in Canada
Beginning in December 2022, Canada will begin measures to phase out single-use plastic products, starting with a ban on the import and manufacture of single-use plastic products, including checkout bags, straws, cutlery, stir sticks, and other hard-to-recycle food service containers. After 2023, businesses will be prohibited from selling these items and manufacturers will not be allowed to export the products after 2025. Canadian politicians hope that this ban will help them reach zero plastic waste by 2030. However, weak enforcement against illegal plastic waste shipments remains a major hole in their overall strategy.
Since 2017, over 100 shipping containers carrying more than 2,300 metric tonnes of waste have been exported illegally, often deliberately mislabeled as clean, recyclable waste. In that time, they have sent 21 warning letters and issued 23 fines for either C$400 or C$2,000, which critics describe as a laughable amount that exporters see as just the cost of doing business. Additionally, the vast majority of Canada’s plastic waste exports go to the U.S., under what is considered to be an illegal arrangement with the United States, which is not a signatory to the Basel Convention and can therefore export waste more freely to the developing world.
OECD projects global plastic waste to triple by 2060
A new report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) projects that global plastic waste will triple by 2060, from 460 million tonnes in 2019 to 1,231 million tonnes in 2060, in the absence of bold new policies. They predict this rise to be fastest in non-OECD countries due to rising wealth and populations, but OECD countries’ plastic waste per capita will also continue to increase. The report also predicts that 17% of plastic waste will be recycled (up from 9% in 2019), 20% will be incinerated, and 50% will go to landfills.
NGOs call on Maersk to ban all plastic waste shipments
At the U.N. Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, environmental groups hosted a side event entitled, “How Plastic Waste Shipments Undermine Real Solutions to Ocean Plastic Pollution.” Recently, the shipping line CMA-CGM announced it would end all plastic waste shipments on its vessels, standing out as the only worldwide shipping company to completely reject plastic waste shipments anywhere on earth. To this end, the groups are calling on global shipping companies, in particular Maersk, to stop acting as the intermediary and ban plastic waste shipments on their ships. Please sign the petition here to call on Maersk to follow shipping giant CMA-CGM and ban plastic waste shipments from being transported on their ships.
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Indian ministry questions companies after relaxing PET import ban
After environmental groups questioned the environment ministry’s decision to relax the ban on the import of PET waste, Indian officials are asking seven private companies to share details regarding the nature and quantity of plastic waste they seek to import. In 2021, claiming that there is not enough PET waste in India, these companies applied to import 93,000 tonnes of PET waste from countries such as the U.S., Canada, and Germany, as its import had been banned since 2019. Officials had given in to these pressures but are now questioning the need for imported waste. More than 1.4 million tonnes of PET plastic are consumed annually in India. Even considering a generous 80% recycling rate, approximately 280,000 tonnes of plastic bottle waste would remain uncollected, which would more than cover the amount imported by these companies.
Turkey continues to bear the brunt of E.U. waste
Recent E.U. data shows that nearly half of all E.U. waste exports go to Turkey, totaling 14.7 million tonnes in 2021. While much of this waste is highly recyclable ferrous scrap, Turkey’s plastic waste industry continues to resort to dumping and burning to manage much of the plastic waste. In April, recycling companies in Adana promised to clean 18 dumpsites where plastic waste was found within a month. After the one-month period passed, they asked for additional time to clean the sites, attempting to gloss over the issue so it is forgotten and indicating that they lack the capacity to actually recycle this waste. Meanwhile, the number of fires breaking out at recycling facilities is soaring, with many of them happening at night and under suspicious circumstances, as companies struggle to deal with the unrecyclable plastic they receive.
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The Atlas of Plastic Waste |
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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.
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Plastic Waste Transparency Project |
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