Shipping plastic waste to poor countries just got harder
More than 180 countries have agreed to include plastic in a treaty regulating exports of hazardous waste.
It just got more difficult for rich countries to ship their plastic waste to poor countries. On May 10, more than 180 nations agreed in Geneva to add mixed plastic scrap to the Basel Convention, the treaty that controls the international movement of hazardous waste.
Under the amended treaty, exporters must first obtain consent from the governments of receiving nations before shipping the most contaminated, mixed, or unrecyclable plastic waste. Requiring that kind of special attention is regarded as a crucial step in helping the world gain control of a plastic pollution crisis that has already seen 100 million tons of plastic waste leak into the world’s oceans, according to United Nations figures.
David Azoulay of the Center for
