News that the Environment Agency is paying for 1,4000 tonnes of toxic waste 
illegally dumped in Brazil to be returned to Britain has made us a laughing stock.
I hope the companies concerned are fined and struck off any list of recommended companies dealing with waste and recycling. After all, this is taxpayers’ money and the companies concerned should be forced to pay all the costs incurred.
The Brazilian authorities say that the waste found in the containers included syringes, bags of blood, condoms and nappies. Seats from chemical toilets and used bandages were also reported to be mixed with the bales of recyclable plastic while other containers held computers, televisions and car batteries.
Public resentment in Brazil increased when one of the containers was found to include a collection of dirty toys with a note in Portuguese saying that they should be washed before being distributed to “poor Brazilian childrenâ€. How shameful.
I wonder if this has happened in other countries too, particularly China, which imports our waste plastic for recycling. I suspect many people are not even surprised at this latest dumping; householders often state that they believe their recyclables are dumped at landfill as a reason not to recycle. It does nothing to promote trust and confidence in this very important area. And now this dumping has increased concern about the illegal trade in hazardous waste, despite international laws preventing export without strict safeguards.
My view is that we should in the UK be responsible for recycling our own waste – why do we need to ship it half way round the world at a time when we want to reduce carbon emissions? I remember not so long ago reading that there was only one plastic recycling facility in the UK, which is ludicrous when the demand by householders to recycle plastic is very high. I hope there are more now and that we can be self sufficient in this area.
This is an issue the government has failed to grasp and deal with effectively, and has ended up making us look a laughing stock.
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1,4000 is an amazing amount.
But this was a Brazilian venture, selling to their own country.
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What a load of rubbish. 30 years ago and more we had men like Steptoe who would recycle what could be recycled and would for example give you 50p for an old car battery. The other waste would go into landfill which after a couple of decades would be built on. This all worked perfectly for a hundred years what has gone wrong now?
We are now using more energy to make more wheelie bins to seperate this stuff, we are using more vans to pick up this stuff, god knows how much energy to actually recycle it and more energy to run all the computer servers to enforce this nonsense.
“plastic bags dont decompose” another load of rubbish. Have you ever seen a supermarket bag after it has been in the shed for a few months- it starts turning to fluffy white flakes.
Recycling is bull and nonsense, but somebody is feathering their nest somewhere and its not with recycled rubbish but wadds of cash.