The UK’s Dirty Secret

Why the UK Government must act now to ban plastic waste exports

The UK’s plastic waste export system is fundamentally failing and, without immediate political intervention, the environmental, social and economic consequences will only deepen.

The current system relies on exporting large volumes of plastic waste, often via opaque and poorly monitored trade routes that can lead to illegality, to meet recycling targets and manage the volumes of domestically generated and collected plastic waste.

This practice causes serious environmental damage and human rights abuses in recipient countries, particularly in the Global South, and obscures the scale and severity of Britain’s overconsumption problem.

In 2024, the UK exported at least 598 million kilos of plastic waste, an increase of 30 million kilos on the previous year, demonstrating continued dependence on exports.