Colombo (News 1st): Officials of the Central Environmental Authority (CEA) inspected the garbage dump located at a private company space within the Katunayake Free Trade Zone.

Electronic waste from Western countries, including Australia, is flooding the shores of South-East Asian nations like Thailand, sparking fears of air and water pollution.

The US is the sole member of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) -- the group of 36 developed nations, that has chosen to object to the adoption of recently agreed Basel Convention trade controls to ensure that plastic wastes that are dirty and mixed and thus difficult to recycle can only be exported with the prior permission of the importing country.

Global pollution watchdog organization Basel Action Network (BAN) is supporting a new bipartisan effort to once and for all close off the electronic waste pipeline to countries like China, India, Nigeria, and Ghana.

Container ship MV Bavaria (R), a vessel hired by Canada to ship tonnes of trash back to Canada, arrives at Subic Bay International Terminal Corporation on Subic Port, north of Manila on May 30, 2019. Photo by Noel CELIS / AFP

Wanting to move away from being a dumpyard of used clothings has meant angering Donald Trump's USA. The small east African country is trying to find a way out.

Hong Kong authorities have been urged to look into a high-profile case where a container holding tonnes of electronic and plastic waste illegally shipped to the Philippines from the city was sent back last week.

Philippine officials discovered the cargo in May. Photo: Greenpeace Hong Kong Office / Froilan Gallardo

In its quest to improve recycling rates and to waste less, the EU is losing its renown as a leader in global chemicals management.

In Europe, the phrase "circular economy" is a golden ticket – one of those hopeful-sounding, vaguely futuristic concepts bandied about in the Brussels bubble as a potential solution to the world's environmental problems.

MANILA, Philippines — A green group is calling on the government to immediately ratify the Basel Ban Amendment to ensure that the Philippines will no longer become a dumping ground for wastes.

There is a travel information distribution platform that is not at all known to many travel sales professionals. It is an underground network of those whose work is not for sale at Barnes & Noble and never discussed at travel agent gatherings.

The global trash trade has reached a turning point; wealthier nations have long shipped their plastic waste to the developing world to be processed, but in recent months, some nations in Southeast Asia have begun sending the exports — much of it contaminated plastic and trash that is unrecyclable — back to where it came from.

MANILA, Philippines — The country will again mark another victory in the “battle” against imported garbage as a container van loaded with electronic waste will be sent back to Hong Kong tomorrow, according to the Bureau of Customs (BOC).

Filipino environmental activists hold placards and a replica waste container during a demonstration in Manila last week against the Canadian shipment of rubbish.