Eggs eaten by some of the world's poorest people are being poisoned by plastic waste from rich countries like Canada and the U.S., new research has found. A suite of harmful chemicals are added to plastic and food packaging to give them desirable traits, like grease resistance or flexibility. When they burn or break down, these chemicals contaminate the surrounding environment and animals living or feeding nearby.

THE BASEL CONVENTION is an international agreement barring countries from shipping various hazardous materials to another country without government permission. In 2019, plastic was added to the list. Of the 187 countries participating, only two have yet to ratify — Haiti and the world’s biggest plastics polluter, the United States.

Several years ago, a new label started to appear on plastic packaging. It said "store drop-off" and it directed shoppers to return their packaging to special in-store collection bins that would ensure it got recycled. Soon more than 10,000 items carried the label and an associated website said there were over 18,000 drop-off bins across the United States. All that waste would be turned into wonderful things like park benches.

Optimism, fueled by high prices and huge demand for recycled materials, is dominating the plastics recycling scene. At the same time there are difficulties in fulfilling supply obligations. ‘We’re in that wonderful situation we’ve only dreamt of: that there is such demand that, once you have value for a plastic, then you’re going to create more innovation, more people wanting to collect, more people seeing it as an untapped resource,’ Sally Houghton of the Plastic Recycling Corporation of California told the latest BIR Convention.

The leader of the Basel Action Network responds to a position taken by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries.

Presenters and panelists at several Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) 2021 World Recycling Convention sessions have made it clear to the BIR community that government scrutiny continues to be the order of the day when it comes to plastic scrap. Individual nations, states and provinces continue to propose and pass legislation limiting the way plastic is used, or charging a fee to discourage its use in some applications.

The Turkish Government has revealed that a small number of recycled polymer grades will be permitted for import. It has set out the HS codes that are permitted under new tough regulations and includes PS,PVC, PP and PET.

On May 12, border officials in southern Romania stopped three trucks loaded with 59 tons of waste trying to enter from Bulgaria. The drivers’ paperwork did not entirely match the contents – steel, plastic and scrap metal – so the convoy was turned back. Days later, a similar thing happened, this time in the Black Sea port of Constanta, where Romanian authorities refused entry to 15 shipping containers laden with 300 tons of “metal and paper, textiles, rubber, wood, batteries and pieces of asbestos” from Germany.

On a per-capita basis, Brits rank second in using the most plastic, just behind Americans, according to a study published in Advances Science last year. What does the UK do with all the plastic waste? Much of it is exported, with a seemingly clean conscience by the government, critics say. Anything that can’t be recycled or adequately incinerated, shouldn’t be exported in the first place. British plastic waste that isn’t recycled often lands in foreign landfills and the ocean, affecting humans and animals at sea and land.

Turkey is banning the import of most plastic waste after an investigation revealed British recycling was left to burn or be dumped on beaches and roadsides. Greenpeace visited 10 sites in the southern city of Adana in March. Investigators found waste including British supermarket packaging in waterways, on beaches and in illegal waste mountains.

For months, containers full of plastic waste have been rotting from the yellow sack in ports in Turkey. The authorities have now ordered the containers to be returned. It could be expensive for the recyclers involved.

German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd has been caught in the act of fraud by Senegalese Customs. According to Liberation, the fifth largest ship owner in the world was fraudulently trying to bring 25 tons of plastic waste into Senegal.

Turkey’s Government has banned the import of commodity code 391510 plastics that are typically grades such as PET, HDPE and LDPE.

In its Official Gazette, Turkey’s Ministry of Trade added a further notification to its previous ban of certain plastics in December that means entry of PE-based plastics with this commodity code will be banned within 45 days of today.