Thousands of tons of recycling carefully sorted by families in Britain is being dumped illegally in the Third World.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358450/The-gangs-dumping-recycling-Third-World-All-effort-separating-rubbish-waste-time.html#ixzz1LJAJquwx
A three-year investigation by the Environment Agency has uncovered a multi-million pound trade in shipping waste out of the country.
Investigators are now bringing prosecutions against 30 criminal gangs, with five cases already going through the courts.
Hazardous: Scavengers on a dump in Nairobi, Kenya
The revelations come in the week it emerged that nearly 140 councils force householders to sort rubbish into five or more containers – with some insisting on as many as nine.
They are likely to raise concerns about EU recycling laws, which are blamed for creating the illegal trade. They also risk fuelling public cynicism about the value of recycling.
Many of the cases involve waste electrical items which may no longer be sent to landfill in the UK and end up on toxic dumps in Africa. In one case, investigators found a shipment of around 10,000 defunct and broken televisions and computer screens.
Cars queue at a busy waste recycling centre in South Manchester - but are they wasting their time?
Thousands of used tyres have been sent to Vietnam and other countries in the Far East. And, despite a number of high-profile cases in the past, investigators have also uncovered a flourishing illegal trade in the export of ordinary household recycling, such as bottles, cans and newspapers.
Sarah Chare, head of the Environment Agency’s national enforcement service, described the waste dumping as a ‘despicable’ crime.
She said in Africa children are paid to extract valuable metals from circuit boards in appalling conditions. Investigators have had reports that recovered metal is melted down and made into bullets.
Rubbish collected in Britain is often transported to the Third World
Waste plastics are routinely burned in the open air, giving off clouds of poison gas, while heavy metals and other toxic substances leak into waterways. Mrs Chare said: ‘These are organised criminal gangs, who are out to make as much money as possible without any regard for the harm they are causing.
‘It is very much a reputation issue for our country to have criminals dumping material in the developing world with appalling consequences for the local people and environment. It also damages the legitimate recycling industry in this country.’
In many cases local authorities and businesses collecting waste will subcontract parts of the process to third parties. Because of the increasing cost of disposing of toxic items legally, criminal gangs posing as legitimate businesses are able to undercut genuine firms by a large margin.
Although councils and businesses have a legal duty to ensure waste is disposed of properly, Mrs Chare said some asked too few questions when offered a cheap deal.
Despite the scale of the problem she insisted the public should not give up on recycling. She said: ‘People should continue to do the right thing and recycle. It would be wrong to allow this to give recycling a bad name.
The Environment Agency says Britons should not give up recycling
‘We will always have a criminal element wanting to make money from things that have a value, but that does not detract from the fact that recycling is the right thing to do.’
The prosecutions follow the establishment of national intelligence and enforcement units within the Environment Agency in 2007. Conviction could result in up to two years in jail and seizure of criminal assets.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358450/The-gangs-dumping-recycling-Third-World-All-effort-separating-rubbish-waste-time.html#ixzz1LJAJquwx
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