[GreenYes] Made in Britain, dumped in China

[RicAnthony@no.address]

Made in Britain, dumped in China 
How our waste causes death and disease 6,000 miles from home 
By Clifford Coonan in Beijing 
Published: 26 January 2007 
 
 


 
Mounds of foul-smelling waste stand rotting in the cold air. The dark,  
smog-choked sky lowers menacingly and the river runs slowly, a black tide of  toxic 
sludge. Sandwich boxes carrying the labels of British supermarket chains  
poke through the dumps; crumpled pizza wrappers and plastic bags blanket the  
streets. Working in the middle of it all are children, some as young as four,  
sifting though the waste with their bare hands.  
Lianjiao, a remote Chinese village in the booming southern province of  
Guangdong, is a long way for a plastic bag to travel; but it is where almost all  
British supermarket carrier bags end up. And the foil-lined crisp packets. And  
the triangular hard plastic packaging for your bacon, lettuce and tomato  
sandwiches from a top high-street chain. Because China is rapidly becoming  
Britain's biggest rubbish dump. 
Regardless of how carefully you separate your waste, there is a good chance a 
 disposal firm will dump it all in together with other kinds of plastic trash 
and  ship it to the developing world to be dealt with by a family of migrant 
workers  earning a pittance. They will deal with the salad-bar container, the 
pistachio  ice-cream container and the superfluous bag for carrots in your 
shopping basket  in a variety of different ways - it may be recycled, it may 
become landfill or  it may simply be burnt. Whatever happens, it is generally not 
a priority for the  waste disposal company. Britain dumps around two million 
tonnes of waste in  China every year, everything from plastic mineral water 
bottles to shopping bags  and other forms of superfluous packaging from some of 
the country's biggest  supermarkets. 
A huge amount of it arrives in 10-ton shipments in Lianjiao, a village which  
has become a centre for processing plastic waste - much of it from Britain. 
The  high levels of pollution in the nearby river and the poisoned sky are the 
price  of waste disposal in the developing world. 
So too are the many and varied health complaints suffered by the local  
population, who risk multiple skin ailments and exposure to potent carcinogens  as 
they touch the contaminated materials. Poisonous chemical effluents stream  
into their water supply, turning it black or lurid red, and studies by  
Greenpeace show that acid rain is the norm in this region. Children are prone to  
fevers and coughs. Their skin is often disfigured by the toxic plastic waste  they 
have to process. 
They are victims of Britain's addiction to excessive packaging, highlighted  
in this newspaper's Campaign Against Waste. 
According to figures from China's environmental watchdog, the village handles 
 more than 200,000 tonnes of plastic a year, a big chunk of it imported  
illegally. "China strictly bans any imports of waste that cannot be recycled as  
raw materials or be treated harmlessly in the country," according to the State  
Environmental Protection Administration (Sepa). "Driven by profits, some 
dealers  collaborate with overseas law breakers and illegally smuggle or import 
rubbish  into China, causing damage to people's health and to the environment." 
In Lianjiao, plastic sandwich wrappers from British high-street shops are  
sprayed with chemicals to remove the food debris and then hosed down, the  
effluent running into the Pearl river, one of the world's most polluted  waterways. 
A large proportion of the plastic waste - that which is not fit for  
recycling - is burnt in incinerators or kilns, or melted down in acid baths. The  air 
is filled with heady toxic smoke. 
The local government has banned unlicensed firms from the plastic-waste  
business and halted the operation of plastic-waste processing factories that are  
not equipped with environmental protection facilities. 
"But, driven by immediate interests, some local people still try to introduce 
 polluting material into China, posing a threat to the environment and to 
public  health," Sepa says. 
Sepa is negotiating with European Union agencies on finding ways to stop  
cross-border movements of waste and preventing illegal domestic-waste smuggling.  
The watchdog called on developed countries to respect the terms of the 1989  
Basel Convention, which bans the export of toxic rubbish from developed  
countries to the Third World. The US has not signed up to the agreement, but the  
UK and other European countries have. 
According to Chinese figures, rubbish imports from abroad have grown steadily 
 in the past decade and 70 per cent of toxic plastic produced around the 
world  each year now finds its way illegally into China. Ninety per cent of this 
waste  is broken down in small workshops like those in Lianjiao. 
"According to our understanding, a lot of waste is coming from Britain and  
other places in Europe," says an official. "This damages health all right, but 
a  lot of the workers here are migrant workers who come from even poorer 
provinces,  so it's a sacrifice they are prepared to make." Some of these workers 
earn  little more than £1.50 a day for treating the materials. 
No company in Lianjiao has official approval to import waste. There is  
awareness of the problem at the highest level of government and top  environmental 
agencies have pledged to resolve the issue, but local corruption  and the lure 
of a quick couple of pounds per tonne of rubbish makes it difficult  to 
enforce rules. 
A report by the University of Shantou on the town of Guiyu, another Guangdong 
 recycling hub, showed that more than 80 per cent of local children suffer 
from  lead poisoning. 
Among the plastic found by this correspondent at Lianjiao was the wrapping  
for a pack of Cathedral City cheddar, one of Britain's best-selling brands of  
cheese. Dairy Crest, which makes the cheese but has no control over what 
happens  to its packaging, confirmed last night the wrapping was non-recyclable. 
The company said in a statement: "The food safety laws and our commitment to  
maintain quality and taste require Cathedral City's packaging to be laminated 
to  act as an oxygen barrier. Therefore, the current packaging is 
non-recyclable.  However, we are aggressively investigating the latest technology to see 
if it is  possible to recycle the packaging in the future." 
How you can help 
Do you have an example of absurd packaging? Have you been infuriated by the  
waste with something you bought? 
If so, tell us and we will highlight it in The Independent and take it up  
with the companies concerned. Send your examples to _waste@ independent.co.uk_ 
(mailto:waste@no.address)  


-- 

These personal opinions do not necessarily reflect the policy of Friends of 
the Earth.



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