The number of fires breaking out in plastic recycling plants has soared in Turkey.
Experts and advocates suspect that it is not a coincidence, believing that some entrepreneurs want to get rid of unwanted garbage sometimes imported from Europe.
In Kartepe, an industrial town in the northwest, one of these sites was closed by the authorities in December last year after the outbreak of three fires in less than a month.
Photo: AFP
One burned for more than 50 hours, spewing toxic black smoke over the area wedged between the mountains and the Sea of Marmara.
“We don’t want our lakes and springs to be polluted,” said Beyhan Korkmaz, an environmental advocate in the city.
“Should we wear masks,” she said, concerned about the polluting dioxin emissions from a dozen similar fires within a 5km radius in less than two years.
There was a fire every three days in Turkey’s plastic reprocessing plants on average last year.
The number rose from 33 in 2019 to 121 this year, said Sedat Gundogdu, a professor specializing in plastic pollution at Cukurova University in Adana, Turkey.
Over the same period, Turkey became the leading importer of European plastic waste — ahead of Malaysia — after China banned imports at the start of 2018.
Nearly 520,000 tonnes arrived in Turkey last year, adding to the 4 to 6 million tonnes the country generates each year, data compiled by Greenpeace showed.
“The problem is not importing plastic from Europe. The problem is importing nonrecyclable or residual plastics,” said Baris Calli, professor of environmental engineering at Marmara University in Istanbul.
In a report published in August 2020, international police organization Interpol expressed concern about an “an increase in illegal waste fire and landfills in Europe and Asia,” citing Turkey in particular.
Following a regulation enacted in October last year, companies in the sector found guilty of arson can have their permits withdrawn.
However, Calli said the plastic industry lobby has grown stronger in Turkey in the past few years.
Turkey announced a ban on the import of plastic waste in May last year following an outcry after the publication of images of waste from Europe dumped in ditches and rivers.
However, the ban was lifted a week after it came into force.
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