It’s our waste not theirs!

The Sri Lankan government has sent back to us containers of waste. Around 260 tonnes of it.

Good on them! We need to stop our moralising about the state of developing nations and their green efforts, when rich countries continue to ship their crap to distant shores.

The whole waste story is a huge tenet of the net zero challenge and for all too many years, we glibly say ‘’oh I’ve done my bit, I threw it in the recycling”, yet we know we still ship thousands of tonnes of ‘recycled waste’ to countries like Sri Lanka, China, India and many more.

The Environment Agency admits that it can’t police all the shipments and although the majority of it is legal, many disreputable waste companies send over dodgy loads, to dodgy counterparts in the developing world.

We should really look at this – it’s our waste, we should deal with it. Government and the whole waste industry have the duty to stop it and dispose of it here. And we as consumers and businesses need to radically reduce the amount we produce.

Otherwise we might wake up one day with a container load of filth dumped on the beaches of Cornwall with a note, justifiably saying, ‘Return to Sender’.