With these nations overwhelmed, thousands of tons of waste plastic are stranded at home in the US, as we reveal in our story later this week. In some places, like Turkey, a surge in foreign waste shipments is disrupting efforts to handle locally generated plastics. The newest hotspots for handling US plastic recycling are some of the world’s poorest countries, including Bangladesh, Laos, Ethiopia and Senegal, offering cheap labor and limited environmental regulation. Last year, the equivalent of 68,000 shipping containers of American plastic recycling were exported from the US to developing countries that mismanage more than 70% of their own plastic waste. The consequences for public health and the environment are grim.Ī team of Guardian reporters in 11 countries has found: Tham is paid the equivalent of $6.50 a day to strip off the non-recyclable elements and sort what remains: translucent plastic in one pile, opaque in another.Ī Guardian investigation has found that hundreds of thousands of tons of US plastic are being shipped every year to poorly regulated developing countries around the globe for the dirty, labor-intensive process of recycling. Nguyễn Thị Hồng Thắm is paid $6.50 a day to sort recycling on the outskirts of Hanoi.
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