Exposed — the plastics waste trade scams that fuel crime and injustice around the world
Old wheelie bins discarded by UK householders may be funding organised crime and contributing to environmental injustice and human rights violations around the globe.
In the first of a new two-part report, Dirty Deals, the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA UK) reveals startling evidence of how regulatory weaknesses, legal loopholes and outdated practices in the global plastic waste trade are being exploited, fuelling a thriving illegal market.
The trade is characterised by its complexity and global reach, involves a multitude of actors, regulatory codes, transportation methods and market dynamics that create an ideal environment for illicit activities.
EIA Legal and Policy Specialist Amy Youngman said: “It’s outrageous that the UK is still exporting its plastic waste to vulnerable nations, offloading its environmental burden onto communities already struggling with waste mismanagement. This isn’t recycling — it’s exploitation.
“Wealthy countries are refusing to tackle the problem at the source and are actively choosing to push the problem onto others, fuelling environmental injustice and enabling criminal networks to profit at home and abroad.
“It’s time the UK took responsibility for its own waste and the crime embedded in their system, rather than perpetuating waste colonialism and contributing to harm and fraud overseas.”
The Dirty Deals investigation takes a close look at the UK’s extended producer responsibility (EPR) packaging system, which includes plastic producers purchasing Packaging Recovery Notes (PRN) and Packaging Export Recovery Notes (PERN) from recyclers to attain their mandated recycling targets.
A PRN is issued for each tonne of UK-sourced packaging material that is reprocessed and can worth up to £500. The export version (PERN) is issued when evidence is provided proving that UK packaging material has reached its destination and is being recycled.
However, EIA’s investigations in the UK reveal evidence of significant fraud, potentially amounting to £50 million annually.
One UK company even openly agreed to engage in fraud with an EIA undercover investigator, offering to disguise old wheelie bin plastic as legitimate plastic packaging waste material.
Due to budget cuts this year, many UK councils have not issued new wheelie bins, leaving an excess of old worn-out bins. Companies are still collecting and grinding them down, but there is little demand for the regrind in the UK.
Instead, it is being exported to Germany and, mostly, to Türkiye. In the process, companies are ‘losing the paperwork’ and falsely labelling the material, allowing them to claim profitable PRNs on it. One industry source summed it up simply: “It’s a big scam”.
After EIA discovered LinkedIn advertisements indicating that the UK firm National Polymers, based in Weston-super-Mare, buys and sells various plastics, including wheelie bin regrind, we decided to investigate further.
Cayne Andrew
Director Cayne Andrew offered our investigator 300-500 tonnes of wheelie bin regrind at £580 a tonne. When we asked about claiming a PRN on the material, he replied positively and proposed moving the wheelie bin material from its original waste site to a facility in Coventry, from which he sourced crates qualifying for PRN. He claimed this facility would provide photos of crates to create false evidence that our wheelie bins were actually crates, enabling a PRN claim.
In a right-to-reply offered to Cayne Andrew before publication of Dirty Deals, EIA asked why he was prepared to help commit PRN fraud. His response contradicted the content of the telephone voice recording as he claimed he was “pestered” by our undercover investigator and said PRN fraud was something neither he nor anyone else in his company would ever be involved in.
One indicator of the scale of this kind of fraud in the UK is the gap between customs data and the National Packaging Waste Database. In 2023, 567,593 tonnes of UK plastic waste exported under HS Code 3915 were recorded by customs, but PRNs were claimed on 611,168 tonnes of plastic waste, leaving 43,575 tonnes, or £12 million – roughly the same as 3,000 fully loaded double-decker buses – unaccounted for.
Such fraud is not limited to the UK and the Dirty Deals investigation also looked at India’s plastic waste EPR system, which allows producers, importers and brand owners to purchase credits or partnerships to meet their regulatory requirements. EIA’s investigation into each of these systems revealed fraud is prevalent.
India generates approximately 3.5-4 million tonnes of plastic waste annually and introduced EPR as part of its 2011 Plastic Waste Management Rules.
Despite India’s reported plastic recycling rate of 60 per cent, largely due to an extensive informal recycling sector, a significant portion of plastic waste remains uncollected or improperly managed, making the country one of the top global contributors of mismanaged plastic waste into the environment.
In 2023, India reported the import of 64,312 tonnes of plastic waste under HS code 3915, predominantly from countries in the Global North, including the US, Japan the EU and the UK.
Additionally, India also imports large volumes of plastic recyclate and other secondary plastic products, such as unused stocks of plastic film. Data from the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate of the Netherlands suggests these shipments often include misdeclared items to bypass import restrictions, creating a smokescreen for the illegal import of problematic waste.
To counteract this kind of plastic waste fraud, Dirty Deals urgently recommends:
- a reduction in virgin plastics production
- creating global transparency across the lifecycle of all materials and products
- a ban plastic waste exports from the UK
- India should phase out plastic imports
- strengthening national waste management and recycling systems
- improving governance of recycling producer responsibility schemes
- increasing enforcement and international cooperation
- supporting the role of the informal sector in India.
