Interpol tracks crime gangs smuggling plastic rubbish into China for illegal waste recycling

Beijing stopped importing waste in 2018 to upgrade its economy and force recyclers to tackle their own rubbish problems

Environmental group WWF says China was an ‘easy solution’ for many countries but there now needed to be a global framework to tackle the waste issue

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In 2015, a Chinese labourer was pictured sorting out plastic bottles for recycling in Dong Xiao Kou village, on the outskirts of Beijing. But in 2018 China refused to become one of the world’s dumping grounds and stopped importing rubbish from other countries. Now criminal gangs are illegally importing waste. Photo: AFP

Published: 12:45pm, 28 Aug 2020Updated: 2:47pm, 28 Aug 2020

Criminal networks are smuggling plastic rubbish from the West to illegal recycling plants in Asia, profiting from a 2018 ban on waste imports in China where the bulk of used plastic was previously processed, Interpol said on Friday.

The decline in the number of legal export channels for millions of tonnes of waste has “opened the door to illegal business opportunities”, resulting in a surge in illegal trade and waste treatment, the police organisation said in a report.

China started importing waste in the 1980s, when ships delivering goods to Europe or the United States returned laden with potentially profitable recyclable materials.

But Beijing put an end to the business in 2018 to upgrade its economy and force recyclers to tackle the surging volume of domestic waste lying untreated in huge landfill belts surrounding all its major cities.

Interpol’s global pollution enforcement team said criminal gangs had since taken advantage of the disruption to global supply chains that previously saw more than 7 million tonnes of scrap plastic arrive at China’s ports every year.

It said “there has been a considerable increase over the past two years in illegal waste shipments, primarily diverted to Southeast Asia via multiple transit countries to camouflage the origins of the waste shipment”.