Turkey is the latest country to reject the role of world’s dustbin. With their environment bill, ministers have a chance to end this vandalism
The international plastics recycling market is broken. It is doubtful whether it ever worked. For most of the last decade, China was the world’s largest importer of recyclable materials, some of which were used in manufacturing. But it banned these imports as part of a “beautiful China” policy aimed at improving the environment.
Malaysia was the next country to fight back against being treated as the “dumping ground of the world” – as its environment minister, Yeo Bee Yin, put it in 2019. More than 200 facilities were closed, and thousands of tonnes of waste returned, amid growing evidence of the involvement of organised crime in the global waste business. Now Turkey has rejected the role of international rubbish bin: after a Greenpeace investigation found plastics dumped in rivers, on beaches and in illegal waste mountains, it announced that most plastic waste imports (which included 209,642 tonnes from the UK in 2020) will be banned in six weeks’ time.