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1. Vague and confusing definitions: It is very difficult for practitioners, customs, and enforcement agents to distinguish between the three categories as the definitions are extremely complex, leading to poor implementation. Lack of legal clarity and a level playing field, creates pollution havens and waste freeways across the globe that traders will exploit, undermining the objectives of the Convention. Removing B3011 under Annex IX and requiring Prior Informed Consent (PIC) for all plastic waste under Annex II and VIII will help protect importing countries against the ambiguity and illegality and the many attempts to exploit loopholes.
2. Electronic waste precedent should be followed: There is already an excellent precedent of almost identical action in the realm of Electronic Wastes when the Parties adopted in 2022 the e-Waste Amendments spearheaded by Switzerland and Ghana. Similarly the difficulty in distinguishing between hazardous and non-hazardous e-waste was a driving factor in the decision to control all of it. Now after these amendments have entered into force in 2025 it is difficult for countries to claim that some types of e-waste should not need to be controlled, making implementation much stronger.
3. Transparency of the Trade is Needed: It is easy to forget that without Basel Controls, the wastes can flow without transparency. Countries will of course lose their right of refusal to an import, but even worse, they will not even know what is crossing their borders and where it is going. B3011 plastics will still be exempt from reporting as well as the requirement for ESM. Governments will lack the power to protect their environment.
4. Physical harm and chemical toxicity ignored: The existing categories largely ignore the hazardous additives in plastic waste. More than 16,000 chemicals are used in their production, of which more than 4,200 are chemicals of concern, classified as persistent, bio-accumulative, mobile, or toxic. The impact of chemical additives in the recycling workplace and nearby communities remains a likely but still largely unaccounted for risk.
5. Plastics recycling, even of B3011, causes more harm than previously thought: Plastic generates microplastics throughout its life cycle, especially during mechanical recycling, leading to contamination of water, air, and soil. Most imported plastic recycling operations leach massive amounts of micro and nano plastics through the operations of shredding, washing, use of sink-float tanks and poor housekeeping practices. Microplastics have been found to be vectors for heavy metals, chemical and even micro bacterial pollution.
6. Blanket unexamined exemptions in B3011 (i.e. unmixed polymers, cured resins, fluorinated compounds): The legacy exemptions found in B3011 and mirrored in Y48 are no longer fit for purpose. These listings were based on knowledge about how these plastics behave when manufactured and used — not as they behave when shredded, open-burned, or poorly incinerated in countries with no fluoropolymer waste standards, microfibers standards, or knowledge about hazardous additives. The fluoropolymer exemptions are especially concerning because some are PFAS and many of the others can break down into PFAS during or after processing. They must, as Norway proposed, be removed.
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