Turkey’s plastics ban: Where does the UK send its waste now?

The boy was probably only a teenager. Rummaging through bags of plastic dumped by the side of the road, he was looking for bottles to sell. 

In amongst the rubbish, were plastic bags from some of the UK’s biggest supermarkets, packaging for cheese, ham and beef burgers.

Our investigation in March 2020 in the southern Turkish City of Adana found that although plastic that had been carefully sorted and separated by households in the UK was being sent to Turkey for recycling, it was, instead, being fly tipped and burned.

Now Ankara has had enough – from July 2021 almost all imports of plastic waste are expected to be banned.

This leaves the UK with a real problem.

Last year the UK sent more plastic packaging waste to Turkey than to any other country. More than 200,000 tonnes, or 30% of all such exports, according to the Environment Agency’s national waste packaging database.

This means 30 shipping containers a day full of plastic waste now need a new home. The UK, however, doesn’t have enough recycling capacity to handle it itself. 

“The alternatives are not obvious,” says Phil Conran from consultancy 360 Environmental.

Maybe if we managed our waste better at the front end, this would significantly reduce the problem and allow remaining waste to be far more manageable. Reb8Solutions help do just that!