“Together with our friends in Turkey, we are calling on our government to end this disgraceful practice by immediately banning waste exports and reducing plastic use across society through ambitious reduction targets.”

‍

Greenpeace campaigners today delivered petitions from the UK and Turkey to 10 Downing Street, calling on the UK government to stop dumping plastic waste in Turkey.

‍

Last year, the UK exported 123,039 tonnes of waste plastic to Turkey alone. While waste export figures from the UK to Turkey declined following last summer’s Wasteminster scandal, the export numbers have already started to creep up again.

‍

The petitions have been signed by 422,735 in the UK and 71,000 in Turkey. The UK is one of the largest producers of plastic waste on earth, producing more plastic waste than any other country except the United States.

‍

Our broken recycling system can’t handle the amount of waste we produce, so we rely on exports to deal with vast quantities of it.

‍

Learn more:

‍

Learn more about Wasteminster here.