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A call to Australia: stop exporting plastic waste as fuel
25 March 2022
A lot of plastic waste is collected in Australia while recycling has barely gotten off the ground. What can be done with the growing mountain of waste? Exporting it has not been an option for a while. The Waste Export Ban Bill, which bans the export of plastic waste, was passed in 2020.
In a recent report, IPEN (International Pollutants Elimination Network) asserts that this policy is misleading. Converted into fuel, the export of plastic waste to countries in the region simply continues.
BAN ON THE EXPORT OF PLASTIC WASTE
The Waste Export Ban Bill was passed simply to formalise what was happening. Exporting to China was not an option for Australia after China prohibited all imports of plastic waste in 2018. A modification to the Basel Convention decreed that as of 2019, mixed and contaminated waste are covered by the scheme that regulates the international trade in dangerous and toxic substances. This allowed countries to reject the import of unwanted plastic more easily.
THE TRICKERY OF AUSTRALIA
It has been known for a while that Australia came up with a trick to enable it to continue exporting plastic waste under another name: fuel.
The collected plastic, originating from households, industry and construction, is processed into pellets. These are finely ground shreds or compressed bales that are supposed to serve as fuel. The result of the processing is called Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF). As it regards a post-processing fuel, it falls outside the letter of the Basel Convention and the country’s own Waste Export Ban Bill.
Export permits for RDF are extended if the recipient countries have the plants that can process the waste responsibly. These are mostly cement kilns and incineration plants for energy generation that use RDF as an extra fuel. Australia is investing billions of dollars in this processing technology and RDF is also being used more often in the country itself.
BAN ON THE EXPORT OF RDF NEEDED
Australia is acting against the spirit of the Basel Convention by claiming that RDF is not waste. Guarantees that RDF is processed responsibly are meaningless in practice. The incineration of plastic causes air pollution and the emission of hazardous substances. IPEN typifies the dumping of waste on recipient countries in this way as neocolonial. IPEN is therefore pushing for a ban on the export of RDF.
INTERNATIONAL PLASTIC TREATY
RDF will be one of the subjects that the international community will have to make agreements on in relation to the international treaty that the United Nations agreed upon. The decision must be to prohibit the export of RDF as a fuel. Countries will have to process their own waste and never again export plastic waste in any form.
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