News from the Natural World: Open more loopholes – UK Government releases plans to dump more plastic waste on poorer countries.
The UK Government, led by Chief Blunderer Boris Johnson, has long sought of ways to dump its trash. They do this by offloading it onto other less fortunate countries. In fact, more than 300 tonnes a day of plastic scrap has been sent to non-OECD countries in 2020 alone. In addition, ministers were ecstatic when official trade data showed exports of plastic waste to a number of countries – including Malaysia, Romania and Vietnam – rose in the first half of 2020.
Boris Johnson had this to say. “If there is one thing we are good at it’s shovelling sh*t downhill. Then blaming people for being covered in sh*t. It’s genius really, we create all the waste, encourage rampant consumerism and then dump all that trash on poorer countries. Then we lord it over them and attack their environmental policies. When the reason they’re having such a bally tough time is that they’re trying to dispose of our crapola. It’s ruddy genius.”
But some humans are really fighting the good fight and trying to call Boris Johnsons bluff. In addition, they have tried to bring in new rules to tackle the wild west of plastic waste dumping. A new international convention to stop richer countries exporting contaminated material for recycling could mean a cleaner ocean in five years. The rules, which came into force on 1 January, also aim to make the trade more transparent in order to allow developing nations such as Vietnam and Malaysia to refuse low-quality, difficult-to-recycle waste before it is even shipped. This was also going to be potentially disastrous for the UK Government, what was Boris going to do with all that waste?
Open More Loopholes – UK Government Releases Plans to Dump More Plastic Waste
But Boris had a trick up his sleeve “Well you see we have this magical thing in the UK called ‘loopholes’. We invented the silly little buggers. They are effectively invisible rules that only posh rich people can see. They’re written by other posh rich lawyers and allow us to do all sorts of nasty things. Offshore Tax Havens, Fraud, Plastic Waste Dumping you name it, there is a loophole allowing us to do anything we want.”