Tonnes of rubbish marked as recyclable to be returned to UK: report
PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek
07.08.2018 14:15
More than 1,000 tonnes of rubbish marked as recyclables will be returned to Great Britain after being intercepted at the Polish port of Gdynia, the IAR news agency reported on Tuesday.
Rubbish. Photo: grafic-vision/Pixabay.com (CC0)
A joint operation by environment and treasury offices last month found 45 containers full of rubbish, though they were marked as containing recyclable plastics and rubber, IAR cited Marian Mazur of the environmental protection office in Gdańsk as saying.
“There were boxes, metal tins, domestic detergent packaging. All of it dirty, stinky, and wet,” Mazur said, according to IAR.
The items should have been approved by Poland’s environmental protection office before being shipped.
The containers, destined to two Polish waste-processing companies, were shipped from six British firms.
The containers were intercepted amid a crackdown on Poland’s “garbage mafia”.
Polish waste disposal companies have allegedly been buying foreign recycling and making a profit by burning it, which is far cheaper than processing into a reusable resource. (vb)
Source: IAR