WASTE. The landfill in León (Mexico) is one of the largest garbage dumps in this part of the country. In the image you can see the space where the leached products fall after treatment.
Photo: Juan José L. Plascencia
Share
- Text:
Kennia Velázquez and Mónica Cerbón
Medical plastic waste such as syringes, old monitor housings and even buckets that used to contain toxic products. These are just some of the million pieces of plastic waste imported mostly from rich countries that have made Latin America a global dump. Private companies import this plastic for recycling, but they hardly do the job and thus they become a source of potential pollution.
Companies in the United States have sent the most plastic waste to Latin America: 111 million tons of waste have come out of that country in the last decade, a business in excess of 500 million dollars, according to information from commercial and governmental databases analyzed by OjoPúblico for this six-month investigation.
Away from the eyes of the State, the business is run by companies dealing with items as diverse as the production of bottles, recycling, textile, automotive and ceramic industries, among others.
Worldwide, only 6% of plastic waste is recycled. The imported material should be used to manufacture other lower quality plastic products or to manufacture textiles, but nobody knows how much of it is used and how much ends up in the waste dump. This is in addition to the 225 million tons of trash generated annually in the Latin American nations that receive this waste.
The experts consulted by OjoPúblico consider that this product can sometimes be highly polluting. In theory, plastic waste enters to be recycled, but often products are not ready to face this process. Some have toxic waste that is highly harmful to the environment and health. In less severe cases, they must be washed, which involves using water and polluting chemicals.
Latin America has received more plastic waste since 2018, when China decided to close its doors to waste from countries around the world. To date, this part of the continent has received 53 million tons of these products.
In its report Waste Colonialism does not stop in Latin America, the Autonomous Group for Environmental Research (GAIA), noted that after the Asian giant stopped receiving the world's plastic waste, Latin America became one of the destinations to receive these products along with countries in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Turkey.
Latin America received some 10 million tons of plastic waste from the United States alone in 2017, according to data on global exports. By 2018 – when China closed its doors to global plastic waste – the figure rose to 11 million tons of plastic waste deposited in the region. A slightly higher figure was sent in 2019.
In the following years, the amount of plastic waste imported from the United States increased more sharply. In 2021, 12 million tons of plastic waste were received.
RECYCLERS. Informal plastic garbage collection centers. The most sought after products are bottles.
Photo: Juan José L. Plascencia / POPLab
Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Colombia have received 1,06 million tons of this type of waste in the last decade, from almost all over the world, according to official data analyzed by OjoPúblico . The amount of plastic waste imported by countries in the region between 2012 and 2022 is equivalent to 118 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower.
The five countries reviewed for this research alone accounted for up to US$330.4 million of plastic waste over the last decade. But not in all cases was it possible to obtain the amount of money collected through plastic waste businesses, since there is a lack of information, which has been pointed out by experts in the region as one of the main problems in measuring the problem.
The poor customs supervision allows entry, but the lack of follow-up by the competent authorities prevents having full certainty of the purpose of this waste. For this reason, several environmental organizations believe that these numbers may be higher.
The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) has warned that these omissions allow for the increase in illegal trade in plastic waste and their improper treatment, which sometimes involves illicit labor, money laundering, corruption, tax evasion, as well as other crimes. Interpol has detected the use of false documents for shipments declared to be destined for recovery or as raw material when that is not their true destination.
GAIA, in turn, accuses world powers of keeping their environmental policies with a high cost to the least developed countries. “Much of this sustainable paradise is fed by the shipment to other countries of hundreds of containers full of plastic waste that are recycled at best, but in many others end up in destinations that are impossible to trace, incinerated. buried or recycled under conditions that would never be approved in exporting countries,” says the mentioned report.
Millions of Tons of Plastic Waste
Mexico is the country that has imported the most plastic waste from Latin America: more than 897 thousand tons of plastic waste in 2012-2022, according to the data reviewed. Peru, which accumulates 62 thousand tons in the same period, is still well behind it.
The total amount of waste imported in the same decade puts Chile in the third place on the list with a total of 50 thousand tons of plastic waste received in the past decade, although the trend since 2019 is on the decline.
Colombia ranks fourth: Imports into this country increased sharply since 2016, just as Congress pushed for bills to reduce the use of plastic bags to avoid its environmental impact. In subsequent years, from 2018 to 2022, plastics still entered the country, but in smaller quantities. In total, 45.4 thousand tons of plastic garbage entered the Colombian territory in the last decade.
Meanwhile, Ecuador maintained the lowest levels of plastic imports with just over 21 thousand tons of garbage received between 2012 and 2022. To be able to analyze these data, OjoPúblico considered shipments containing only plastic.
UNFULFILLED COMMITMENTS. Worldwide, only 6% of plastic waste is recycled.
Photo: Juan José L. Plascencia
Latin American countries are the destination for plastic waste consisting of PET, PVC, or polyethylene, but also used syringes, bags which contained blood and other medical materials, TV or computer cases, automotive waste, diaper waste, and even containers contaminated with toxic material, products usually shipped from the United States, China, the Netherlands, Germany or from other countries in the region such as Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Panama, or Puerto Rico.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) points out that annual global plastics production has almost doubled in the last two decades. At the same rate, plastic waste also grew by 126% between 2000 and 2019. While the agency stresses the importance of recycling, it acknowledges that only 6 percent of the raw material for new plastics comes from recycled material.
Agreements for the purchase and sale of plastic waste are negotiated only between private companies and often countries lack the infrastructure to process the waste, or enough interest to track the tons [of waste] entering their territories. In the experts’ opinion, there is no traceability of plastics.
“Companies import them super cheap because for the exporting countries it is rubbish; if it were really a recyclable resource there, they would not export it. They export and import them as garbage, and governments do not follow them,” explains activist Maria Esther Briz, plastic campaigner for Latin America and the Caribbean in Break Free from Plastic.
Environmental groups in Latin America, such as GAIA and the Break Free from Plastic, have found that the figures recorded by import and export governments is lower than the data from business chambers. An important “data gap” to assess the problem.
VERY LITTLE IS RECYCLED. Every year more than 130 million tons of single-use plastics are discarded worldwide.
Photo: Juan José L. Plascencia / POPLab
In short, the lack of surveillance and monitoring means that the exchange of plastic between companies in different countries can occur “illegally, that is, it is not registered; maybe it is waste and is not registered as such or not everything that has been imported can be used,” adds Alethia Vázquez Morillas, an academic researching sustainable technologies at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, in Mexico City.
Transnational Garbage
Although the importing countries are signatories to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, which was created to combat toxic waste deposits in developing countries, contaminated material with little chance of being recycled still enters. One of the main obstacles is that each country, in accordance with its own legislation and the provisions of international conventions, should have to monitor these plastic exchanges in a timely manner, but experts say that this is not really done.
In addition, GAIA indicates that although the Basel Convention requires signatory countries to issue their consent for the entry of plastic waste, this is not always the case, as companies do not report to customs exactly what type of products they are importing. This has caused the Convention to have no direct impact on the reduction of the flows of highly polluting waste.
The United States is not a party to the Basel Convention, so companies registered in its territory would not be able to export to countries that are, but the agreement provides for an exception to the ban in the case of bilateral or multilateral agreements. provided they promote environmentally sound management of hazardous waste.
NFORMAL WORK. Waste picker from the Marquez Human Settlement in the Constitutional Province of Callao, Peru.
Photo: Marco Garro / OjoPúblico
The member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are subject to laxer trade regulations. Within the organization, it has not been possible to regulate the trade in dirty, halogenated plastic waste destined for environmentally sound recycling.
The OECD consists of 35 countries, including Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico, and the United States, which continue this type of exports despite environmental risk. The organization’s next review of these rules will take place in 2024.
“Europe is becoming aware of this issue and they are discussing banning the export of plastic waste to other parts of the world, including OECD countries. European companies are realizing that this is an issue under investigation, that waste routes are being traced, and perhaps they want to avoid showing that they are sending plastic waste to countries in the global south,” adds Alejandra Parra Muñoz, responsible for the Autonomous Group for Environmental Research (GAIA) for Latin America.
NFORMAL WORK.Recycler of Playa Márquez, in the district of Ventanilla, in Peru.
Photo: Marco Garro / OjoPúblico
The United Nations issued a Green Customs Guide to Multilateral Environmental Agreements to promote sustainable trade and to guide customs officials on multilateral environmental agreements and to prevent the entry of items that may cause harm to the environment.
“The company buys it at a junk price, very cheap, washes it, cleans it at the expense of natural resources, and [if] a company does not have, for example, a water treatment plant, what about all the microplastics that are being generated? What about all the soil contaminated with agrochemicals? That goes directly to the rivers and then to the land and affects the surrounding communities; the specific effects should be investigated. While it is not a problem for the company, it is a problem for the country receiving it,” adds Briz.
Mexico must also abide by the T-MEC, the free trade agreement with the United States and Canada, which exempts municipal waste and garbage from tariffs. Between 2012 and 2022, the United States has sent household waste worth US$185.1 million to Mexico alone.
Plastic Pollution and Pandemic
The amount of plastic waste had a significant increase driven by the global Covid-19 pandemic. After the strongest months of the crisis, the use of disposable plastics skyrocketed, not only because of the health and medical needs that led to the production of toxic waste, but also because of the increase in the consumption of home delivered food. always packed with different types of plastics. complicating the operation of the already weak global recycling chain.
A study by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) indicates that the use of masks, gloves, medical waste, and food packaging led to a worrying increase in plastic waste. This collapsed some recycling systems around the world, for example, 46% of recycling facilities in the United Kingdom reduced or discontinued their services in April 2020.
“If no action is taken, more than 70% of this plastic will end up into oceans and landfills, and up to 12% will be burned, causing pollution and disease in the most vulnerable areas of the planet,” the study indicates. The report adds that 85% of the trash found at sea comes from plastic waste and by 2040, the volumes will triple, adding 23 to 37 million metric tons of plastic waste at sea a year.
The World Health Organization has also urged improving plastic waste management systems after the pandemic. In a global analysis, its experts stated that most of the, approximately, 87 thousand tons of personal protective equipment purchased between March 2020 and November 2021 to be shipped to various countries, ended up becoming waste once they were used.
“There has been a kind of breaking point, a setback in plastic recycling policies and in minimizing that element; let’s hope that at a post-pandemic point the pace will return,” said Marcos Alegre Chang, former Peruvian vice-minister of environmental management, in an interview.
On the other hand, in the report “Global Plastics Perspective: Economic Drivers, Environmental Impacts and Policy Options” , the OECD warns that collected plastic wastes may contain additives that were used for their manufacture. They are often mixed with other chemicals and generate highly polluting toxic waste and because they are not sorted properly, they have little value for recycling, they added.
While the world production of recycled plastics grew by 327% between 2000 and 2019, the OECD considers it still is a “small and vulnerable” market, owing to fluctuations in the price of raw materials due to production costs (e.g., collection, sorting, and processing).
Supply, explains Alethia Vazquez, “is determined by the global dynamics of the market. “When virgin raw material is very expensive or very scarce, the market for recycling is strengthened, because it is good business; when on the contrary the price of oil falls and there is a lot of virgin material available, the price difference between the two becomes much smaller, and some companies may not find it attractive to make the change. In general, we can expect recycled raw material to cost between 50 and 80% of the price of virgin raw material.”
On the other hand, there is the problems of informality. “This circuit of informal recycling existing in the cities, almost a constant in Latin America, has a series of difficulties yet to be solved,” Alegre Chang expressed. And it lists “employment in unacceptable conditions, environmental pollution (because it takes only what has commercial value and the rest is thrown out, burned, or badly disposed of,” among others.
In February 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly was held in Nairobi, where the document “End Plastic Pollution: Towards a legally binding international agreement”, which aims to promote sustainable plastics production and consumption, environmentally sound waste management and promote national and international cooperation measures and financial support for research and implementation.
No Solutions
Projections indicate that plastic waste will continue increasing, and activists are emphatic in pointing out that recycling is failing. The main reason is that the industry prioritizes economic profits over damage to the environment and health, and that governments are neglecting to control these markets, agree the experts consulted for this report.
“A government should be able to say: If I am unable to manage this waste, if I am unable to manage this material, you (the companies) cannot import it and cannot put it on the market. Governments are responsible to control companies and implement waste management systems,” says Briz.
Specialists add that countries must have greater control over what enters their territories and their final disposal. This would make it possible to know the exact environmental impact of plastic waste treatment and implement better traceability and treatment processes with the waste that cannot be recycled.
The good news, according to Parra Muñoz, is that the United Nations (UN) is moving towards signing an international agreement to regulate the plastic waste trade.
ABANDONMENT. Garbage bags collected by people from Asentamiento Humano Marquez, in Ventanilla (Peru).
Photo: Marco Garro / OjoPúblico
“International regulations addressing plastics production are expected to be signed in 2025, aiming at reduced production and limits on the types of plastics that can be manufactured, as well as their uses and toxic additives, which should be banned to protect human health and the environment and to make recycling a safe activity”.
The creation and implementation of this new treaty is a challenge of global dimensions and a hope for mitigating climate change.