WHAT A RECYCLING SHAMBLES!
Revealed: TWO-THIRDS of plastic food containers we carefully set aside are burnt or sent to landfill
TWO-Thirds of plastic pots, tubs and trays recycled by families are burnt or go to landfill.
were extremely difficult to recycle. And it cited major problems with fruit and vegetable punnets and bakery goods trays.
The Scottish Daily Mail, which campaigns against plastic pollution, today reveals that waste from British families ended up in a dump Town halls admitted last night that only a third of the 525,000 tons they collect from households can actually be reused. The black plastic in ready-meal packs is hard to process, according to the Local Government Association. It said margarine tubs and yoghurt pots made from polypropylene
Sinking, ankle-deep, into the stinking ashen remains of an enormous fire, i survey the desolation that stretches in every direction.
As i look round, i can see mounds of plastic packaging from items obviously bought by British families.
There are containers for Loyd grossman’s pasta sauce, John West tuna steaks marinated in spring water, M&S orange juice, Tesco smoked salmon slices and Sainsbury’s honey roast ham.
gagging for breath as i delve into the suppurating mass of charred rubbish, i pick out carrier bags from several of our major supermarkets; a Young’s gastro fish fillets container; and a sachet of grand Cafe’s Rainforest Alliance certified coffee, whose slogan — ‘keeping it green’ — seems ironic given the environmental catastrophe that has occurred here.
But the biggest shock, given what i have found, is that i’m not at a refuse site in kent or Essex, but a vast tip in Poland, ravaged by a fire at the end of May.
no doubt the British shoppers who purchased these products dutifully sorted their household waste, believing it would be recycled in a clean, efficient British plant, and that they were helping to save the planet.
However, as i discovered during a lengthy investigation into Britain’s chaotic, badly policed recycling industry, the reality is often very different.
Until this year as much as two-thirds of Britain’s plastic waste — 2.7million tons since 2012 — had been sent to China, which used to be the number one consumer of recyclable plastic.
B UT in January the country banned virtually all waste plastic imports. The decision, prompted by a Chinese TV documentary exposing the conditions of villagers — many children — who worked for a pittance to sort and clean contaminated plastic waste, has had a seismic effect on the global market.
it has also had a major effect in Britain, which only has domestic recycling capacity for about 40per cent of our plastic waste, and is struggling to meet a target of reprocessing more than half our output by 2020, forcing us to seek new overseas buyers. Poland has stepped into the void; its government appear willing to allow their country to become a dumping ground for Europe’s waste, and rake in the profits. After Malaysia, it has now become the second-biggest market for Britain’s recyclable plastic.
in 2016, we sent 67,000 tons to Poland, but one recycling industry expert predicts the amount will exceed 100,000 tons this year. That is about 12per cent of all the plastic waste we export. Of course, much of this British plastic is being reprocessed responsibly, in the many sleek recycling plants that have sprung up in Poland.
But there is a dark underbelly to this nascent Polish industry, and it threatens to undermine Britain’s great recycling effort — an effort which has been led by the Daily Mail, through our campaign to reduce the use of plastic bags and packaging. For according to Poland’s environmental protection authorities, criminal gangs or ‘trash mafia’ are muscling in by agreeing to export British waste cheaply — on the pretext that it will be recycled — then dumping it in remote makeshift landfills or simply torching the lot.
The cleverest of these crooks sometimes claim fat insurance pay-outs into the bargain. Sir James Bevan, head of the Uk Environment Agency (EA), has described waste crime as ‘the new narcotics’. it costs Britain £1billion a year in bogus claims for government credits paid to waste recyclers and exporters; massive frauds involving recycling fees and landfill tax; and cleaning up hundreds of illegal fly-tipping sites.
Since the start of the year, fires have destroyed more than 60 waste tips across Poland. While some may have been sparked by the hot weather, or started accidentally, investigators are in no doubt that many were caused deliberately.
in theory, the international movement of waste is strictly regulated. Under EU laws, importers and exporters are bound to dispose of it safely, either by recycling or incineration for fuel. it is illegal to ship unsorted, mixed waste and
household rubbish for dumping or burning. In practice, however, effective policing of this system appears almost impossible.
Two weeks ago, the National Audit Office published a damning report accusing the Environment Agency of ‘not being sufficiently proactive in managing the risks associated with the rise in exports of waste’.
Since 2002, it said, the amount of UK waste sent overseas has increased sixfold. Yet in the past five years, compliance visits to British recycling companies and exporters have fallen greatly.
Sources in Poland tell me that the country’s environmental protection chief is so concerned about the illicit smuggling of waste from Britain to Poland that, as early as April 25, 2017, he contacted the Environment Agency to warn of the problem.
The EA has assured him that action is being taken, and some illegal consignments of waste have been intercepted, I am told. A spokesman revealed that three companies are under ‘active criminal investigation for suspected illegal waste exports to Poland’.
HE added that the EA employed ‘a range of enforcement actions to prevent and deter illegal waste crime’ and took the issue seriously.
So, what of the massive fire at the tip in the Polish town of Zgierz, which I visited a few days ago? Was this blaze — which raged for 24 hours, belching out columns of toxic smoke that are feared to have polluted the water and soil for miles around — the work of the trash mafia? Certainly, that is one of the theories being explored by prosecutors.
And how did all that recycled British waste — some 405 tons of it, according to investigators — end up being dumped on a football stadium-sized tip, only to be set alight with potentially catastrophic consequences?
Having followed the trail of this consignment, I have uncovered a mysterious story that encapsulates the complexities of policing Britain’s waste trade.
It involves an apparently reputable West Country brokerage and a shadowy Midlandsbased firm with Polish directors, which is said to have acted as middleman in the transaction and arranged the shipment.
But it begins with the company who leased and operated the burned tip, an outfit called GreenTec Solutions. It’s based in the city of Lodz, where one of its codirectors, Artur Kurzyk, agreed to speak to me.
Until recently, he said, his firm had nothing to do with recycling. They made building materials. But they produced so much plastic waste that they began looking at ways of recycling it. An engineering whizz devised a machine (now patented) which, he claims, can turn plastic into three kinds of polymer, which could be reused in industry.
This idea remained on the drawing board until the Chinese ban on imports of British plastic waste came into force — when GreenTec’s bosses realised millions could be made, and decided to branch out into recycling.
If Mr Kurzyk is right, his ‘ingenious’ contraption would have revolutionised the recycling industry, churning out plastic pellets at a dizzying rate of one-anda-half tons an hour. Yet, the company put the cart before the horse, importing tons of plastic before the machine was even built.
Had the fire not happened, Mr Kurzyk assured me, production would have begun in September. But when I toured Green-Tec’s deserted warehouse, the scenes were hardly convincing. The recycling plant was unfinished; all I saw was a small experimental device that had made handfuls of pellets. When British recycling experts examined the Mail’s pictures of the tip, they questioned whether much, if any, of the 20,000 tons of waste could have been processed, as Mr Kurzyk claims. It appeared to be dirty, unsorted and mingled with other materials such as rubber, paper, cardboard and textiles. On my visit, I saw all manner of household rubbish that would be difficult, if not impossible, to recycle into usable plastic. The experts pointed out that it had been stored outside for so long, it might have degraded beyond use. These doubts are shared by Polish prosecutors investigating the case, who say Green-Tec’s ‘storage depot’ was little more than a fetid rubbish tip. They have enlisted experts to assess the merits of the recycling scheme. Mr Kurzyk, for his part, insists he and his staff examined every imported bale of waste and were satisfied that — but for a ‘tiny’ amount of material — they contained recyclable plastic. He also maintains the shipments were properly documented and complied with EU regulations. According to prosecutors, however, Green-Tec’s permit for the tip expired in April, a month before the fire, which might be ‘significant’ to their inquiry. T HOUGH it had applied for a renewal, it was under review at the time the blaze started. Whether it would have been granted, given that Zgierz residents were up in arms about the tip, is anyone’s guess.
Indeed, the row over the tip — which stood 50 yards from a chemical plant, and was surrounded only by a flimsy fence with a huge gap in it — had been featured in a Polish TV news bulletin just hours before the fire broke out. It was expected to be central to the forthcoming local elections.
Documents seized from GreenTec show that it received waste from ‘six or seven’ British companies, the names of which will be passed to the Environment Agency. However, Mr Kurzyk says he dealt with just two, which he loosely identified to me.
One of these companies — which he said was listed as the waste supplier — has the same name as a small, family-run recycling brokerage in the West Country. It is on the Environment Agency’s list of accredited exporters and has received plaudits in the green fraternity and local Press.
Its owners were horrified when I told them they had been implicated, and showed them the photographs of the tip.
They said they had never shipped waste to Poland, would not deal with recycling waste in that condition, and feared their name had been used fraudulently. ‘I’m disgusted that people appear to be using our company name,’ one of the bosses told me. ‘We would welcome an investigation and will be in touch with the Environment Agency. This threatens to destroy our good reputation which has taken years to build.’
It is possible that the shipper was another British company
with a similar name, and acted lawfully. But apart from one long-defunct company in the South East — whose former owner says it never traded — there is no record of another firm bearing that name.
The Polish middlemen, who appear to have various other business interests in Britain, have proven equally difficult to trace.
When I called at the most recent address for one director, a modern semi in the suburbs of a large West Midlands town, a Polish woman claimed not to have heard of him.
Lodz prosecutor Tomasz Szczepanek told me the fire was now being investigated in conjunction with others at tips in the region, and that several motives were being investigated, among them the theory that they were set for financial gain.
Though Green-Tec’s co-directors have been questioned, he said, they were being regarded as witnesses rather than suspects, ‘although depending on our findings, this might change. Whether or not it was caused deliberately, this fire shows the huge problems that can be caused by the international shipment of waste — not only from a crime perspective, but also an environmental perspective,’ Mr Szczepanek told me gravely.
The people of Zgierz, who fear the long-term effects of carcinogenic fumes from the fire, would doubtless agree.
They are now voicing their hatred of Green-Tec co-owner Mr Kurzyk on the internet, and, as he admits, some accuse him of being part of the trash mafia. However, he says this is grossly unfair and maintains he cannot be held responsible for the fire. His theory is that it was started either by recycling industry rivals who feared being put out of business by his new machine, or politically motivated sabotage.
The truth will doubtless emerge in due course.
But whatever caused the inferno at Zgierz, the fact that all those smoked salmon wrappers and orange juice cartons ended up there will surely enrage every British family.
It might also make them wonder whether painstakingly sorting through their rubbish was worthwhile after all.