The UK has been accused of failing to live up to its promises in managing plastic waste as new information reveals post-Brexit laws regarding the issue are far less stringent than their counterparts within the EU.
Photo: Pikrepo
Britain is reportedly still allowing tonnes of plastic waste to be shipped and dumped in developing nations, despite the 2019 Conservative manifesto promising to ban the practice.
The government have maintained their pledge to not allow environmental standards to slip post-Brexit.
Read more: UK food standards campaigners hail post-Brexit victory
The EU banned exporting plastic waste from OPEC countries from January 1.
The UK is currently the world's second-largest exporter of plastic per capita, behind only the US.
The UK's exports will now be made under a platform of informed consent, where the nation receiving the waste must accept before anything is shipped and are offered the right of refusal.
The UK reportedly shipped 7,133 metric tonnes of plastic waste to other countries in 2020 alone. Recipients include Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Turkey.
Several plastics financiers have recently come under scrutiny for not applying the same measures to combat pollution that exist within the fossil fuels industry.
The report found these companies often donated in excess of hundreds-of-billions of dollars with no consideration as to what will happen to the waste once its life-cycle has ended.
American companies Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, as well as controversial Swiss food and drink giant Nestlé, were revealed to be the world's top plastics polluters, according to a yearly audit released in early December.
Coca-Cola alone is responsible for 2.9 million tonnes of plastic waste per year.
Both the EU's ban and the UK's policies have been spurred by calls to tackle the global plastic issue.
Under the Basel convention, new international rules have been prompted to tackle the issue.
Jim Puckett, director of the Basel Action Network, told The Guardian that the EU has been planning an outright ban of plastic exports since April 2019.
He said: “We had assumed the UK would at least follow the EU, and so it is a shock to find out now that instead, they choose to have a far weaker control procedure, which can still permit exports of contaminated and difficult-to-recycle plastics to developing countries.
“They are talking the talk, but they have failed to walk the walk.”
He concluded that 90% of the UK's exported plastic waste would be considered dirty or unsorted.
The UK government have confirmed it will be making efforts to bring in the legislature to block the exporting of plastic waste to other parts of the world, but have not offered a timetable of events at this time.
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