More than a third of the waste paper and plastic collected by British local authorities, supermarkets and businesses for recycling is being sent 12,875km to China without any knowledge of the environmental or social costs -- and to the complete surprise of most consumers.
New UK government figures suggest that exports to China are running at 200,000 tonnes of plastic rubbish and 500,000 tonnes of paper and cardboard a year -- a huge increase on just three years ago.
PHOTO: EPA
Much of the plastic sent to China is packaging but agents for Chinese companies are now buying up and exporting thousands of tonnes of unwashed bottles, containers, and other household waste.
"China is buying up everything it can. It is sucking in material from all over the world and it doesn't give two noodles what it takes," said one plastics recycler who asked not to be identified.
"I know of 300 firms, mostly in China, offering to buy my plastics. I have three or four companies cold-calling me every day from China requesting material. They have very cheap labor to sort the material but the shame is that it is being done there and not here. They don't care about the quality, or the contamination. No one checks what is sent or what arrives," the recycler said.
The British plastics industry admits that the global trade is starving some local recycling initiatives of materials and putting established firms out of business or at risk. According to UK plastic recyclers, agents for Chinese companies are offering ?120 (US$215) a tonne for mixed plastic bottles, far more than British companies can pay.
"The industry here can only support ?50 a tonne. We believe that 10 to 15,000 tonnes of old bottles are going to China. Yet only about 25,000 tonnes were collected last year," said Stephen Chase of Chase Plastics.
"The Chinese put me out of business," said Edward Clack, a plastics recycler who invested in two recycling plants in Britain.
"Everyone has lost supplies to China. The local market is being starved of materials. Hundreds of brokers are buying up the plastic and shipping it out. It's cheaper to send a container to China than to Scotland," he said.
China drives the global waste trade, importing more than 3 million tonnes of waste plastic and 15 million tonnes of paper and board a year. But the trade is being driven equally by tough EU legislation forcing local authorities and businesses to recycle more.
Landfill charges are rising steeply, making it relatively cheaper to send the waste abroad. Meanwhile, major companies have moved in, offering to collect and dispose of large quantities.
One of Britain's largest freight forwarding companies confirmed that the return waste trade to China is accelerating rapidly.
"We are shipping a phenomenal amount of waste, maybe 15,000 tonnes a week to China," said a spokesman for Warrant freight forwarders of Liverpool.
The current price for sending a standard 26-tonne container of waste plastic to China, he said, is about ?500.
Western plastic companies are setting up in China, but some of the poorest people are employed to sort and recycle the plastic.
"Plastic is now one of the biggest industries in Guangdong Province, but much of the work is being done by migrant labor earning a pittance," said Martin Baker, of Greenpeace China.
"I would say that Britain is dumping its rubbish in the name of recycling. It is not responsible recycling that is being done. It is reprocessing, but the methods being used are still mostly rudimentary. There are some good factories, but on the whole it is small scale, done in backstreets with little environmental standards," Baker said.
"People are burning plastic, sorting it by hand, the water gets polluted and it goes back into the rivers," he said.
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