What is Waste Colonialism?

The term was first used at the 1989 UNEP Basel Convention.

It is the domination of one country by another, in which the richer country disposes of or dumps its waste using the poorer country’s land and resources.

Jeremy Hunt, a waste colonialist from the last government, did not follow Chris Skidmore’s recommendations to ban UK waste exports, even after we kindly reminded him of them during a constituency litter pick.

What happens to UK waste?

The UK exports over 60% of its plastic waste abroad. And that’s a lot – we produce up to 2.5m tonnes of plastic packaging waste a year.

But this is just packaging waste. Household waste, including non-plastics, is circa 27m tonnes per annum, and commercial and industrial waste is upward of 30m tonnes per annum.

[Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-waste-data/uk-statistics-on-waste#waste-from-commercial-and-industrial-ci-activities]

In 2019 the UK had a missing 900,000 tonnes of plastic packaging, unaccounted for at end of life. This is presumably mismanaged, criminally or recklessly, and then lost to waste trafficking (illegally selling on waste), or in the environment.

Calls to ban plastic waste exports, including in the government’s own Skidmore report in 2023, and from Greenpeace, have not been agreed to by the government.

Source: Environmental Investigation Agency

Exports to Turkey

More of the waste the UK can’t manage goes to Turkey than to any other country.

Polyethylene makes up 94% of the plastic waste which the UK exports to Turkey and 74% of all plastic waste Turkey receives.

A Greenpeace investigation has revealed that over 50% of recycling sent to Turkey cannot be recycled. It found waste being dumped and burned at the roadside.

Where does the rest of the world’s waste go?

“There are eight billion tonnes of plastic in the world – to put that into context, it weighs more than every single person who has ever existed.”
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/mps-and-sheffield-researchers-call-ban-all-plastic-waste-exports

Much waste is is exported to southeast Asian countries and Turkey, where little is recycled. Mismanagement is estimated at 57% in Malaysia, and as much as 75% and 83% in Thailand and Indonesia respectively.

SE Asia is a hotspot for waste because it can be brought on international vessels returning from the West to China.

The China Ban

In 2018 China banned import of most plastics. This fundamentally changed the dynamic between nations, displacing an estimated 111m metric tons of plastic waste between 2021 and 2030.

It’s not just packaging

We use so many plastic products that have no good disposal method. Just one example of thousands is car tyres.

“Every month, thousands of tonnes of used tyres leave our ports on a passage to India. There they are baked in pyrolysis plants, to make a dirty industrial fuel. While some of these plants meet Indian regulations, hundreds – perhaps thousands – are pouring filth into the air, as officials look the other way. When tyre pyrolysis is done badly, it can produce a hideous mix of toxins: heavy metals, benzene, dioxins, furans and other persistent organic chemicals, some of which are highly carcinogenic. Videos of tyre pyrolysis in India show black smoke leaking from the baking chamber, and workers in t-shirts, without masks or any other protective equipment, cleaning tarry residues out of the pipes and flasks.”
George Monbiot

If tyres aren’t pyrolized for cheap fuel or made into building materials or ground up for children’s playgrounds, they end up on huge dumps, often in the Middle East and Africa. These are huge fire risks and potential carbon bombs, as we have seen many times over the last half century.

Illegal Trade in Plastics

So there is a huge discrepancy between the amount of plastic waste being exported and the capacities of importing countries to deal with it.

This opens up a vast market for the trafficking of plastic. In the EU the estimated value of the criminal market is up to 15bn euros. Many of the countries that receive the most waste also have the biggest problem in illegal activity related to it: countries in East Asia, as well as India and Turkey. INTERPOL says organised crime is increasingly involved in illegal waste trade.

[Source: https://eia-international.org/wp-content/uploads/EIA-The-Truth-Behind-Trash-FINAL.pdf]

Planetary and Health Consequences

As we have seen, there is a global trade in plastic waste. This involves both legal and illegal routes.

Whether waste is legally traded or trafficked, its direction of travel is away from richer countries including the UK towards poorer countries.

There, it is illegally dumped and burned. It is legally recycled, but this, too, increases microplastics and the toxicity of waterways.

With fewer resources for cleanups and to fight for the rights to clean environments, many people are now living in the permanent backwash of the developed world’s plastic waste.