The world’s plastics waste trade is a cover for criminal exploitation and abuses of human rights
The global plastic waste trade is an environmental disaster hiding in plain sight, EIA’s latest report concludes.
Undermined by exploitable loopholes and weak enforcement, the plastic waste trade fuels organised crime, drives working conditions that amount to human rights violations and is devastating to the environment and human health.
In the second instalment of its two-part Dirty Deals report, the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) pulls back the curtain to expose a system in which misdeclared plastic waste, murky supply chains and shadowy brokers thrive.
And these systemic failures result in millions of tonnes of plastic waste from the Global North being dumped on countries unable to handle such huge volumes.
EIA Legal and Policy Specialist Amy Youngman said: “Despite moving up the international agenda, the plastic waste crisis continues to spiral beyond control and the time to act is now.
“Dirty Deals is a call to action. What we urgently need is a total ban on all plastic waste exports from the UK and, where trade does occur, there should be mandatory corporate due diligence reinforced with transparent digital tracking systems to stop these crimes in their tracks.”
Dirty Deals – Part One was released in October and lifted the lid on misuse of the UK’s producer responsibility packaging scheme, which includes plastic producers purchasing Packaging Recovery Notes (PRN) and Packaging Export Recovery Notes (PERN) from recyclers to attain their mandated recycling targets.
EIA investigations found evidence of significant fraud potentially amounting to £50 million a year and further uncovered widespread fraud in India’s plastic waste extended producer responsibility system.
Dirty Deals – Part Two builds on this work and outlines how, despite international laws such as the Basel Convention regulating the transboundary movement of wastes including plastic, illicit operations continue to exploit loopholes and weak enforcement, creating an illusion of responsible recycling while in reality wreaking havoc on those communities suffocating under the waste shipped to them.
Research found that unscrupulous traders in Europe are using fake documents, complex transshipment routes and weak enforcement to flood plastic waste into places such as Türkiye, whose plastics recycling sector is already riddled with worker exploitation, including child labour and dangerous conditions for refugees.
Youngman added: “The final round of talks for a Global Plastics Treaty is due to get under way in Busan, South Korea from 25 November and this a golden opportunity to firmly tackle the harmful waste trade by bolstering regulations.
“The EU and UK, as major contributors to the global waste trade, must acknowledge their role and commit to stricter controls to prevent further harm to vulnerable communities.
“The simple truth is that the world is not going to recycle its way out of the dangerous mess we’ve got ourselves into — we need to turn off the plastics production tap at source and underpin that with full transparency and proper enforcement of the global waste trade.”
