U.S. Continues to Ship Illegal Plastic Waste to Developing Countries

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By Tiffany Duong of EcoWatch

A man carries a bucket of plastic waste at an import plastic waste dump in Mojokerto, Indonesia, on December 4, 2018. Ulet Ifansasti / Getty Images

A man carries a bucket of plastic waste at an import plastic waste dump in Mojokerto, Indonesia, on December 4, 2018. Ulet Ifansasti / Getty Images

The majority of the world is working together to reverse the massive plastic pollution problem. But, the world's leading producer of plastic waste, the U.S., hasn't signed on and isn't following the rules.

In 2019, 187 countries, except for the U.S. and Haiti, voted to amend the 1989 Basel Convention to include plastic waste in the definition of hazardous materials, and to strictly limit how that trash is traded internationally. The binding framework hoped to make globally traded plastic waste more transparent and better regulated. It went into effect on Jan. 1, 2021.

UN officials hoped the agreement would curb ocean plastic within five years. Supporters believed the convention would level the industry's global playing field by allowing developing nations such as Vietnam and Malaysia to refuse low-quality and hard-to-recycle plastics before they were shipped from developed nations, a UN transboundary waste chief told The Guardian.

At the start of the year, when the new rules were just being implemented, the fact remained that the U.S. had not agreed to the amendment despite producing most of the world's plastic waste. Proponents held that the amendment would still apply to the U.S. anytime it tried to trade plastic waste with any of the participating 187 countries, many of which are poor and developing nations, CNN reported.

According to the Basel Action Network (BAN), a nonprofit organization that lobbies against the plastic waste trade, participating nations are prohibited from trading waste with countries that have not ratified the Basel Convention, The Maritime Executive reported. This creates an effective ban on plastic waste trade between the U.S. and most of the world, and makes U.S. plastic export shipments "criminal traffic as soon as the ships get on the high seas," BAN told The Maritime Executive.