‘Most hated man of 2019’ breaks his silence
Jim Makris claims he had permission to export recycling material to the Philippines
Jim Makris was already lying low and trying to keep his name out of the newspapers when he read, in the spring of 2019, that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had threatened war … with Canada.
Over Makris’s company’s shipping containers.
That’s when the Toronto recycling businessman realized his idea — already a controversy in the global news cycle — had escalated into the kind of conflict he never could have imagined.
The man behind the story of Canada’s infamous Philippines trash crisis had become, in his words, the most “hated man of 2019.”
Now, more than a year later, he’s breaking his silence.
Makris says he never did anything wrong and that audits prove the containers that drew so much attention were of recycling — not trash. And he wants the government of Canada to help him prove it. He also wants an apology. “It’s affected me and my family. I don’t want to be at the grocery store one day and someone yells at me because they won’t know the truth,” he said.
“I depended on my government, and I got screwed.”
Starting in the summer of 2013, in what was to become a tense, six-year conflict between Canada and the Philippines, Makris’s company, Chronic Inc., shipped to a port near Manila 103 containers with plastics to be sorted and recycled.
It wasn’t the first such shipment made by Chronic, but it was by far the most controversial.
Much of Canada’s blue box material — coming from households and businesses alike — ends up in dumps or gets incinerated, because no one wants to buy the material in Canada.
That’s why companies such as Chronic ship it overseas, where labour for the sorting of the material is less expensive, and there are plenty of nearby plastic manufacturers ready to buy up the recycled material.
The destination for Chronic’s containers was in Valenzuela, a Philippine city known for its recycling industry.
But inspections in the Philippines found some of the containers included “plastic bottles, plastic bags, newspapers, household garbage and used adult diapers,” according to the Philippine bureau of customs.
That became the basis for an outcry, by environmental activists and members of the Philippine government alike.
Under public pressure, Canada last summer fronted the $1.14-million cost of returning most of the containers
from the Philippines to Canadian soil, where the contents were incinerated, but not before the tensions escalated into full-blown diplomatic crisis — with Duterte saying the Philippines would declare “war” on Canada if it didn’t return the shipment to Canadian soil.
Shipping trash to another country is heavily restricted by an international agreement called the Basel Convention.
The rules, however, are not without exception. Under an administrative order from the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources that was effective in 2013 — when Makris shipped his containers — there was an allowance for materials containing small amounts of hazardous substances to be imported for recovery or recycling, if the importer received written approval from the department.
Makris says he was trying to import recycling. The shipments he had sent to the Philippines, which came from Canadian blue box programs, were declared to customs in the Philippines under the category of “waste parings and scrap plastics,” which was allowed under the Philippine laws at the time as long as the contents did not include toxic materials. The rules also state that the plastics cannot be mixed and unsorted.
To ship the containers, Makris received what was called “importation clearance of recyclable materials containing hazardous waste,” from the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The clearance documents, one of which was reviewed by the Star, allowed 10 containers of recyclable material at a time to be imported by Chronic Plastics — the company running Chronic’s warehouse in Valenzuela city.
Makris said the licences were enough to import multiple shipments of recycling — until the 103 containers arrived. That’s when, for reasons Makris says he still doesn’t fully understand, Philippine officials claimed the containers contained too much hazardous material to be covered by the licence.
“I don’t know why this came out,” he said. “Now they’re sitting there saying it’s garbage, and I don’t have anyone sticking up for me.”
The true contents of the containers — whether they were filled with recyclable plastics and only trace amounts of trash as Makris asserts, or whether they were more contaminated, Philippine officials said at the time — could be the key issue in whether the shipment was legal. A Philippine court in 2016 ordered that the shipping containers be sent back to Canada at the expense of the importer, Chronic Plastics rather than be disposed locally.
Multiple audits of the contents have been performed over the years, by both Philippine and Canadian authorities. A 2014 study by the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources found a “significant” amount of material that could not be recycled, but did not say how much, and also concluded that the material was not toxic.
Before the waste was returned to Canada, where it was to be incinerated in Vancouver, the city’s director of solid waste operations told the Star that Canadian authorities had performed their own audit on the container contents, and found it was 95 per cent paper and plastic, while only one per cent was “contamination from the recycling stream” — essentially stray garbage that ends up in blue bins.
Makris is working with lawyer Jason Squire to try to get Environment Canada to release the full results of that audit, which, in Makris’s view, would clear his reputation.
So far, Squire said, the answer has been no.
What’s clear is that there were no laws in Canada specifically preventing the export of the containers in 2013.
In 2014, the Canadian Ambassador to the Philippines said that shippers could be penalized under Canadian law for breaking import and export rules, but the government never fined Makris, or Chronic Inc. A spokesperson for Environment Canada confirmed that’s because there were no Canadian regulations preventing export of trash at that time.
Makris alleges that’s because the government knew he never broke the rules, but has failed to support him publicly, enabling the public to go on believing that he shipped polluting or dangerous goods.
Canadian officials did not respond to questions about whether they possessed the documents Makris says entitled him to ship the containers to the Philippines.
In a statement sent to The Star, Moira Kelly from Environment Canada said the government did update its exportation rules surrounding recycling in 2016.
“From that point on, all Canadian exporters of hazardous waste to Basel Convention countries are required to notify and seek an authorization permit from the department,” Kelly wrote. “The department will only issue an export permit to a Canadian exporter once it obtains consent to the import from the importing Basel country.”
Chronic’s containers came to be seen as the most visible example of an Asian country defending its environment from other countries’ trash. The rallying cry was simple and emotive. “We will not become the world’s trash can,” as a Filipino judge put it.
The importers of Chronic’s containers in the Philippines faced criminal charges.
Members of the public began asking how the government would try to recoup the costs from the Canadian company that had sent the containers in the first place. But Makris said Canada has never asked for a payment. Environment Canada did not answer questions about the financial costs of returning the shipment.
The view that export recycling could be a dirty business gained global recognition in 2013, when China launched an initiative called Operation Green Fence.
Previously, a major buyer of recycling material from abroad, China put up extensive restrictions on recycling imports to prevent the import of contaminated material that had to be thrown away.
“I think people look at recycling as garbage,” Makris said.
That’s not how he sees it, he said. “It’s a commodity — you give me a container of plastic bags, I’ll give you a container of plastic bags back.”
Garbage-filled containers are not all that rare, with the Philippines dealing with such a shipment last year from Australia. That garbage was to be burned for energy in the Philippines but the country says that violates its clean-air laws.
The year before, South Korea took back containers of trash that had ended up in the Philippines in just a matter of months, drawing negative comparisons for Canada, which took almost six years.
“We’ve essentially been internationally embarrassed into taking the waste back,” said Myra Hird, a professor in the school of environmental studies at Queen’s University, at the time Canada agreed to take the shipping containers back.
The years-long dispute over the garbage highlights the need for much stronger regulations aimed at decreasing consumption and increasing reuse and refurbishment, she said.
“We need governments that are much stronger, who are willing to take on industry.”
Kelly wrote that Environment Canada is actively communicating with companies that export recycling to make sure they’re complying with the new rules, and that Environment Canada officials contacted more than 100 such exporters to Malaysia in 2019.
Activists in the Philippines last week called on Canada to ratify an amendment to the Basel convention that would ban the export of hazardous waste outright. Canada, so far, has not signed on.
“Now they’re sitting there saying it’s garbage, and I don’t have anyone sticking up for me.”
JIM MAKRIS CHRONIC INC.