Concern over recycled waste exported to China
In documents secured through the Freedom of Information Act, it emerged while the Department of the Environment had expressed serious concerns over a period of 18 months about where the waste was being dumped, they continued to export it en masse.
According to TV3, which secured the documentation, 50,000 tonnes of cardboard, paper, plastics and metal was sold to China each year.
An internal Department of the Environment email dated April 2006 showed concerns from a number of EU states.
“There’s a large amount of waste being shipped to China… we need to ensure it is not being dumped,” it said. “Efforts by the Irish Ministry for the Environment to set up contacts with the Chinese authorities to that end have to date been unsuccessful.”
In January 2007 a fax was sent by an official in the Department of the Environment to the Chinese Environmental Protection Administration outlining the worries of the Irish Government and other EU states.
It claimed there were problems trying to verify the recovery of waste in China, difficulties trying to get brokers to divulge information about the destination of waste and a lack of co-operation from Chinese authorities.
“When waste is shipped to China it is done without any knowledge of the final destination or the recovery process,” it said.
The problem was not confined to Irish waste. Last January the Department received emails from an EU body saying it was worried about reports of British waste illegally dumped in China. There’s also a record of an email sent by Dutch authorities concerned about a Chinese computer recycling operation.
The last email TV3 secured, dated November 2007, detailed the Department of the Environment asking if the Chinese Authorities had considered a Draft Memorandum of Cooperation on the waste issue. That document had been sent to the Chinese the previous June, almost six months earlier.
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