Taxpayers on hook for garbage fiasco
Canada pays $1.2 million to ship rejected recycling back from Philippines
VANCOUVER— The Philippines garbage fiasco will cost Canadian taxpayers almost $1.2 million, but the federal government won’t say how it’s going to get the money back from the private company that set off an international tempest in a trash can.
When asked how it was going to hold Whitby-based Chronic Inc. and president Demetrios “Jim” Makris accountable for the cost of shipping 1,500 tonnes of plastics mixed with household waste to Vancouver and burning it, an Environment Canada spokesperson would only say the government is “looking at ways to hold the responsible parties to account.”
When pressed further and asked why Canadians are responsible for a private business transaction that went sideways, the spokesperson said it did ask Chronic to repatriate the trash, but it refused.
“In 2014, the Government of Canada requested the Canadian exporter to bring back the waste, but did not have the legal means at the time to compel it to do so,” said Gabrielle Lamontage, a communications adviser for Environment Canada.
She also said the Philippines government took the local importer, Chronic Plastics, to court and ordered it to ship the containers back to Canada, but the company did not comply. Makris set up Chronic Plastics in Valenzuela City to sort and sell the plastics he was buying from a recycling company in Vancouver.
When asked Friday if the government knows where Makris is and has talked to him recently, Environment Canada spokesperson Caroline Thériault said she didn’t think so.
“I don’t know if they do or not. I know that the company is listed (in the Ontario corporate registry) right now, but I’m not sure if it’s operational.”
In May, the Star went to the address in Whitby listed on Chronic’s 2004 incorporation documents, but the storefront at 113 Brock St. S. was occupied by a head shop selling bongs and water pipes, and no one answered the door leading to the apartments above. The telephone number listed for the business now belongs to a Whitby obstetrician and gynecologist.
A search of the Canadian bankruptcy database turns up no documents relating to Chronic or Makris, which suggests it isn’t insolvent.
Chronic sent103 containers of what it said were plastic scraps for recycling to the Philippines in 2013 and 2014, but when inspectors discovered some of the shipments contained household garbage, it started impounding the containers. Thirty-four containers were disposed in a Filipino landfill and the others were sent back to Canada. On Saturday, the Anna Maersk, carrying 69 containers of Canadian garbage and ewaste, docked at Deltaport near the Tsawwassen ferry terminal just after 7 a.m. Authorities say the containers will be unloaded and held there before being moved to an incineration facility in Burnaby, B.C.
Chris Allan, the director of solid waste operations for Metro Vancouver, has seen Environment Canada’s waste audit on the containers and said just 1 per cent of it is household trash.
When Philippines inspectors checked the Chronic Plastics recycling plant in August 2013 and found the imported plastic was mixed in with other waste, they impounded all other shipments from Chronic because they said it contravened the country’s Toxic Substances and Hazardous and Nuclear Wastes Act, according to a timeline of the case prepared by Victoria-based Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation. When customs agents inspected 18 more containers in January 2014, they said they found plastic bags, plastic bottles, newspapers, household garbage and used adult diapers, which they considered hazardous waste. But a November waste audit concluded there was no toxic or hazardous waste, just baled municipal solid waste that was unsuitable for recycling, according to the timeline included in an April 2019 legal opinion on the case by Pacific CELL lawyer Anthony Ho.
The Philippines government has been asking the Canadian government to take the trash back under the Basel Convention ever since, with President Rodrigo Duterte threatening war in April 2019, withdrawing his ambassador and consuls general from Canada and issuing a ban on travel to Canada, which was lifted around the time the trash left the Philippines on May 30 bound for Canada.
The $1.2-million cost to taxpayers, which will be paid to the Canadian arm of the French shipping company Bolloré Logistics, includes preparation of the waste in the Philippines, shipping to Canada, transportation to Metro Vancouver’s Waste-to-Energy Facility in Burnaby and its incineration.
Kathleen Ruff, director of the human rights advocacy campaign Right On Canada wants the federal government to hold Chronic Inc. accountable and take legal action.
“People who are exporting stuff to other countries are not allowed to fraudulently label what they’re exporting. I think Canadian law does not allow that, I think common sense tells you that we’re not allowed to do that,” she said.
Canada is a signatory to the Basel Convention, an international agreement designed to prevent developed countries from dumping waste in developing countries without their consent.
According to the convention, if a country refuses a shipment of waste, the exporter has to pay to remove it or dispose of it properly. If the exporter can’t or won’t accept responsibility for the waste, the government of the country where it originated must assume the cost of disposing it somewhere else or shipping it back.
Each country that has signed the agreement is supposed to reflect the Basel Convention rules in their own laws. However, Canada did not implement laws to hold export companies accountable until 2016, when it amended the Canadian Environmental Protection Act — about three years after Chronic Inc.’s shipments started arriving in the Philippines.
In an interview with the Star in 2014, Makris denied that he shipped trash disguised as recyclables to the Philippines.
“Their story of this garbage thing is driving me nuts,” Makris said at the time, adding that the impounded containers were part of his second shipment to the Philippines. He said it was “95 per cent plastic” but did contain some paper and aluminum from household recycling bins.