Greens say U.S.-Canada plastic shipping violates treaty

Jacob Wallace, E&E News reporter

Published: Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Under amendments to the Basel Convention that take effect Friday, any party to the convention that agrees to ship its plastic waste to a non-party, such as the United States, must ensure the recipient has sufficient environmental controls. Zachary Lehr/Arkansas National Guard Public Affairs Office

A quietly signed agreement between Canada and the United States allows the free shipment of plastic waste to continue, a move that activists say will soon violate an international treaty.

The agreement was reached Oct. 26, but the countries didn't release the full text until this month. It allows the continued movement of plastic waste between the two countries, preserving a status quo in place since the 1980s.

But Canada is a party to the Basel Convention, an international agreement governing the shipment of hazardous waste.

In 2019, Basel Convention parties agreed to adopt amendments — which take effect Friday — restricting the shipment of plastic waste. Under the amendments, any party to the convention that reaches an agreement to ship its plastic waste to a non-party, such as the United States, must ensure the non-party has environmental controls equivalent to the convention.

The U.S.-Canada agreement includes no binding measures to ensure that, activists say.

"How can you affirm environmentally sound management when there's no capacity for transparency or enforcement?" said Jim Puckett, founder and executive director of Basel Action Network. "They're just going to continue letting trade happen."

The agreement between the United States and Canada refers to the Basel Convention and says it "affirms the environmentally sound management" of waste in both countries. It also, however, says the agreement is not considered legally binding.

Environment and Climate Change Canada, the country's ministry in charge of Basel Convention matters, said it considers the agreement to be environmentally sound and in line with the updated provisions of the convention.

"There are significant environmental benefits associated with trade in plastic waste between Canada and the US, including strengthening and development of recycling infrastructure in both countries," a spokesperson for the ministry said in a statement. "Through this trade, recyclers in both countries continue to have access to recyclable materials and landfilling of plastic waste is reduced."

In a separate statement, EPA confirmed that the agreement is not legally binding but said it "contains various commitments by the Participants in connection with the environmentally sound management of covered waste and scrap."

The agreement is disappointing, Recycling Council of Ontario Executive Director Jo-Anne St. Godard said, in light of domestic efforts to curb plastic waste. Canada often positions itself as a leader on environmental issues, including by recently pushing for a global marine plastics treaty.

"Canada is making really important policy commitments to solve waste as a problem," St. Godard said. "So if they need this for purposes of disposal, then they should be transparent not only about what is involved in that agreement but what does it allow the U.S. to do or not do."

Puckett said the agreement could set back the international effort to stop the dumping of plastic waste in less-industrialized countries from powerhouses like Canada and the United States.

Plastic waste "could easily go to a broker in the U.S. who could export the stuff to a dump in Thailand," he said.

"As soon as it's on the high seas, going toward a Basel country, it's illegal trade; it's criminal trafficking. And so we have this really weird situation where the U.S. can aid and abet criminal trafficking, but never have to be held accountable on it."

Hidden waste

The terms of the agreement were negotiated behind closed doors by representatives from EPA and the U.S. departments of Commerce and State, as well as Environment Canada. Neither Canada nor the United States released the full language of the agreement until December, bowing to public pressure from Canadian and U.S. environmental groups.

Advocates said the private nature of the negotiations made them skeptical that the two countries were within bounds.

St. Godard pointed out that the Basel plastic waste rules were designed to make international shipments traceable, allowing all countries and the public to know where their exports are being taken and whether the waste is being disposed of in an environmentally safe manner.

But if Canada's waste is funneled through the United States, it may no longer be subject to the same traceability standards, she said, allowing waste to go unaccounted for and to potentially pollute less-industrialized countries.

"We want full accountability in all of the materials we're generating, irrespective of whether they're just for recycling or disposal purposes," St. Godard said. "I think we want to know the final fate of our materials, just to be a responsible country working in a global capacity. Full stop."

The U.S.-Canada waste trade is a $100 million business. The United States received almost 90% of the plastic waste generated by its northern neighbor, which totaled over 72 million pounds, in the third quarter of 2020, according to numbers from the U.S. trade database compiled by the Last Beach Cleanup. Canada similarly imports a great deal of plastic waste from the United States: 88 million pounds in the third quarter of 2020 alone.

That trade also includes the shipment of plastic waste from the United States to Canada to burn as fuel, Last Beach Cleanup founder Jan Dell said. Under the terms of the agreement, cement kilns in Canada could continue to import plastic fuel, something that would not be considered environmentally sound under the updated Basel terms, she said.

The United States exports most of its plastic waste to countries that are not part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: over 44 million pounds of waste per month in 2020.

Much of that waste will fall under banned categories of plastic under the Basel Convention's new rules, meaning trade partners like Malaysia and Vietnam would have to either turn away some of those shipments or accept them illegally.

Stakeholder call

Puckett, founder and president of Basel Action Network, said he first heard about the agreement through a stakeholder call publicized by the Department of Commerce on Nov. 18.

Puckett said that he was the only representative of a nongovernmental organization on the call, and that it was the first he was hearing of the agreement. He said he was not aware of any waste advocates who had heard from U.S. officials about the agreement before it was finalized.

By contrast, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries' vice president of advocacy, Adina Renee Adler, said her organization was aware of the agreement before negotiations were finished.

"ISRI believes the agreement will facilitate the environmentally sound management of end of life plastics according to the scriptures of the Basel Convention. For that reason, ISRI supports the agreement," Adler said in a statement.

EPA did not specify what groups were reached for input before the agreement was signed and why. The agency noted that it was not required to send the agreement to the Senate for approval because it is not legally binding.

Puckett said he will continue to keep up the pressure on EPA and other federal agencies to explain the logic of the agreement into the new year. He said he's worried that if the agreement is allowed to stand, it could set a dangerous precedent for international environmental law.

"We're not gonna let this go," Puckett said. "To have a country like Canada, who supposedly respects multilateral environmental agreements, do this shows that there are some powerful interests behind it."