Spain is becoming the illegal landfill in Europe and mafias are throwing us a good part of the garbage that, in countries such as Germany, France or Italy, have no capacity to recycle. In other words: the waste system is rotten and The smell is starting to come.
“Only 12% of the waste in the world is recycled,” says Oliver Franklin-Willis, “the rest is incinerated or climbs a ship destined for another site and ready! Now the waste is another problem ». He doesn’t care about anyone until the cube begins to overflow. That is the disgusting truth that it flies over «landfill. The dirty reality of what we throw, where it goes and why it matters »(Captain Swing), the chronicle that results from a four -year trip chasing the trail of our waste.
Its author is 35 years old and is a journalist. He lives in Essex, the United Kingdom. Directs the British version of GQ magazine. He has written about art scammers and seabed explorers. He has been informing about sustainability for many years and, now, debuts with his first book, which has been appointed book of the BBC Radio 4 week and one of the best of 2023 by the New Yorker.
One day you threw the garbage and wondered: «Where will you go? It is as if it disintegrate ».
You throw the garbage in the cube once a week, take it and never see it again … PUF! Disappears. The countries of the global northern see waste as something that has been resolved with technology. If you ask you, you will say what happens with it is that it is recycled, but it is not so. Not quite. The truth is that, for 20-30 years, a large part of what we thought was being recycled, it was actually being loaded into container ships that were sent abroad. It is estimated that more than half of our waste ends up in landfills or in the global south. There is nothing technological in this process. We still get rid of our waste in very outdated ways: we buried them, we burn them or endorse others to bury them, burn them or throw them into the rivers.
Who?
To places such as southern China and Southeast Asia, Africa, South America and Central … as a result of my research, I have traveled to places such as Ghazipur’s landfill, in Nueva Dheli (India), which has an area of 35 Football fields and is as high as a 25 -storey building and I have seen how our clothes fill the Ghana beaches. The blood hurts you. Our system is broken.
But they tell us that a bottle of water has infinite lives …
They tell us that plastic is the easiest material to recycle, because we have been doing it for years. So how is more and more plastic islands floating in the ocean, which do not break down in centuries? Why does the human being have more and more microplastics in the blood and brain? The waste system we have is based many times on deception, lies and a myth: we can recycle everything. My hope with this book is, at least, to provide some transparency.
Does the recycling managers not have?
Yes and no. The issue is that, in the United Kingdom – and I understand that most European countries work with a similar system -, the way we have what is recycled is “broken.” I visited one of the world’s largest bottle recycling facilities. The secret to your good number? It is simple: the waste that is being recycled at the time they enter the factory weighs. Actually, they had a waste loss rate of around 50%. Only half of the real figure was recycling. Our national recycling figures are inflated.
As?
In most countries, you load a container ship full of plastic and, at the time it leaves the port, is marked as recycled. There is no one checking at the other end. No one gets out of the ship in China, Thailand or Türkiye and ensures that our garbage is recycling there. That means that, over the years, they have abused our trust. But it can be solved. Let’s apply real technology. Blockchain That demonstrates the traceability, how much it is recycled, how much it ends on the beaches of Ghana and who are responsible for these waste.
Spain is in white the illegal waste of waste. How do mafias operate?
Today, garbage is a millionaire business that is in the hands of a few giant companies that have lucrative contracts with ministries and governments … but there are also mafias that operate cheaper. Actually, waste has been linked to crime for centuries. The soprano already worked in the business, in the US and in Italy. In Japan there have always been recycling mafias. Because? For two reasons. One is the garbage is disgusting and nobody else wants to touch it. The second is that, as it is disgusting, nobody looks. It is very easy to hide things in the waste business. So, for a long time, they are treated as useless; Something that can be thrown to other people. The criminal gangs say: “Oh, I can get rid of your ‘poop’ cheaper than this multinational.” And, you know, nobody checks that you are not carrying the garbage a few villages beyond and throwing it in a field.
Should we increase the resources allocated to surveillance?
Until recently, forces of the order have not paid much attention to illegal waste traffic. Contaminating has never been treated as a serious crime compared to others, such as drugs; Historically it has fallen into the list of things that matter little, but also intoxicate. The triangle of death, around Naples, has a long history of dumping of toxic waste in the environment and, now, the population suffers a great increase in cancer rates. Although right now surveillance (especially in the EU) is greater than ever and reinforce it would not be bad …
What happens?
That not only is worth that. This business is very opaque, which makes it difficult to identify the scope of criminal operations. These organizations sometimes transport different things that say they carry. For example, they indicate that they carry domestic waste in a plastic cargo, to avoid taxes.
What role do governments play in this problem?
Until recently, governments have considered waste a very low priority and have not invested enough in recycling, waste collection or surveillance. This has allowed companies and criminals to take advantage of.
How do they take advantage?
Because waste is not only waste, but an important part of the global economy, with companies that use thousands of people and generate billions of dollars for their “management.” It also has some peculiarities, such as that we help them free to separate waste or receive money from public administrations. The fair thing is that they assume the responsibility of their garbage in the same way that they are responsible for their greenhouse gase emissions.
Why don’t we give the same importance as to the famous CO2?
We have the perception that CO2 emissions are more urgent than waste, but the truth is that only solid waste produces about 5% of all greenhouse gase emissions (GHG) and foods emit from the order of 10 %. Although you have to keep in mind that the data comes from two different sources, those are the figures. The amounts are huge. Much of those GHG are methane, a gas that heats between 8 and 30 times more than CO2. It is now when we are really beginning to understand the impact of this gas, because now we can see the earth with satellite and look at those methane feathers coming out of the great landfills in the global south.
What can consumers do to address this crisis?
We all have responsibility for our waste. I am not saying that we stop separating or recycling. However, the problem cannot be solved individually, but through political action and with the action of companies. Some solutions include: fix the recycling system, make it more transparent, send less residues abroad and design easier to recycle; make companies that produce large amounts of non -recyclable containers pay more and pay to clean them; make virgin materials more expensive; Reduce our consumption, reuse and repair.
Is it possible to fix the waste problem?
I am optimistic that, doing this and using technology, the problem will be easier to solve. In my book there is no catastrophism, despite the figures. There is no because I trust that, just as we have created this problem, we can solve it.