EU Promotes Greater Global Responsibility on Plastic Waste -- But Not for Internal Market! Press Release

Green Groups Denounce Europe's "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" Policy

In April of last year, the European Union joined Norway in co-sponsoring amendments to the world's only waste treaty to establish new trade controls on the dirtiest and most unrecyclable plastic wastes. These amendments were passed in response to countless human rights abuses, and environmental pollution caused by unregulated plastic waste dumping. Such problematic plastic wastes now will require prior consent by importing nations, and are listed under Annex II of the Basel Convention as "wastes requiring special consideration."

However, last week, the European Commission made it official in their publication of the proposed Delegated Regulation1 that the EU does not intend to fully apply these new trade controls themselves between their own member states. This would leave the door wide open for EU waste traders to shunt difficult-to-recycle plastics to substandard operations in poorer EU communities, as well as plastic waste to "waste-to-energy" incinerators in other EU countries. Incinerating plastic waste undermines recycling, and has dire consequences for the climate, for the environment, and for a toxic-free and just circular economy.