[EN-SEA] Backhaul Container Garbage Market Up Despite UN Difficulties

COSTLY recycling laws have created a burgeoning backhaul market in containerised garbage, often exported to countries which produced electronics which later were discarded wires, meters, dead computers and circuit boards.

Western authorities are now armed with the 1992 UN Basel Convention guidelines, but garbage exports are increasing rapidly as the rising tide of regulation demands more recycling of paper and plastic, prohibits dumping and taxes incineration heavily, reports the New York Times.

Regulations prohibit exporting garbage unless it goes to certified recyclers. Hazardous materials and so-called "problematic" waste, defined unrecyclable, supposedly harmful to the environment, such as soggy waste and household garbage, are also banned under UN guidelines.

Today, exporting containers of garbage to poorer countries is no longer a "leakage, but a haemorrhage," said Jim Puckett, head the Basel Action Network, a Seattle-based environmental lobby attacking garbage exporting from the US.

"The traffic in waste exports has become enormous," said Christian Fischer, chief consultant on waste to the European Environment Agency.Paper, plastic and metal garbage from Europe rose tenfold from 1995 to 2007, said the Times report, with 20 million TEU shipped annually.

Half of it passes through Rotterdam, Europe's main export point for China, Indonesia, India and Africa, where it is recycled cheaply, burned or dumped.

After unfunded eco-mandates were enforced last year, officials expected double the amount of discarded electronics than they actually received.

Much of the rest, they said, was exported. While much of the garage is legal, sent to expensive licensed overseas recyclers, it is four times as expensive to burn it in the Netherlands than to ship it to China.

Because the US has fewer export restrictions, even more is exported in the face of rising recycling laws. Up to 100 TEU of American and Canadian garbage arrives every day in Hong Kong for transshipment, say environmental groups and local authorities, according to the New York Times.

Source : HKSG, 05.10.09