28 november 2023
Last week, the European Commission decided to ban waste exports to countries outside the European Union with a revision of the Waste Shipment Regulation. It is no longer allowed to ship plastic waste to countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Plastic Soup Foundation welcomes this measure, as these countries have major problems processing European plastic waste. Unfortunately, the ban does not solve everything, the shortcuts still remain to countries like Turkey and it also does not solve the illegal waste flow.
It is now prohibited to ship waste to non-OECD countries, but the route to OECD countries remains open. One OECD country that faces a lot of waste dumping is Turkey, as previous research by NRC and others showed. That included Dutch plastic packaging waste.
THE NETHERLANDS PLAYS AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL WASTE TRADE
Earlier research by Plastic Soup Foundation in 2022 showed that the tiny Netherlands plays a major role in the shadowy plastic waste trade. In 2021, for instance, our country was EU’s largest exporter of plastic waste to non-OECD countries.
We are also a big player globally; only Japan and the US exported even more plastic waste to countries in the global south in 2021. Per capita, the Netherlands is even the world leader; our country ships most of the plastic waste from the rich part of the world to countries that cannot properly dispose of that waste.
The Netherlands was also the world’s largest exporter of plastic waste to Indonesia in 2021. Of the total plastic waste exports of over 200 million kilos, almost 70 million kilos went to Indonesia and almost 64 million kilos to Vietnam.
The Netherlands opposes an outright ban on shipping plastic waste. For this reason, Plastic Soup Foundation, together with other environmental organisations, wrote a letter to State Secretary Heijnen to speak out in favour of a total ban. The ministry says it is not excluding all countries outside the EU a priori: international cooperation would be necessary to have sufficient recycling capacity.
As far as Plastic Soup Foundation is concerned, however, all exports of plastic waste outside Europe will stop. The problems created by (illegal) dumping of plastic to low-wage countries must be made punishable as soon as possible. Under the guise that they are raw materials and not waste, our plastic junk is sold to countries that have no recycling capacity for it at all. The traceability of shipped waste also leaves much to be desired, which encourages (illegal) dumping of plastic.
The Netherlands should therefore be ashamed of its role.
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