The United Kingdom’s Environment Agency prosecuted Biffa Waste Services Ltd., Buckinghamshire, England, for sending waste collected from households—such as used nappies and food packaging—to China that the company claimed was waste paper. The export of unsorted household recycling waste from the U.K. to China has been banned since 2006, according to a news release from the U.K. government.
After a three-week trial, a jury at Wood Green Crown court found Biffa guilty of two breaches of the law in May and June 2015. Paper can legally be sent to the People’s Republic of China, but heavily contaminated other waste cannot.
The jury did not accept Biffa’s version of events that consignments leaving its depot in Edmonton, England, four years ago complied with the law because they comprised of waste paper, the U.K. reports in a government news release.
Evidence gathered by investigators at the Felixstowe port clearly identified the contents of seven 25-metric-ton containers bound for China as including glass, plastics, electrical items and metal. When Environment Agency officers searched the cargo, they found everything from women’s underwear and plastic bottles to metal pipes and a damaged copy of a 12-inch record. According to a news release from the U.K. government, investigators also discovered diverse discarded debris such as shoes, plastic bags, an umbrella, socks, hand towels, unused condoms, video tape, toiletries and electric cable.
Jurors were told that Biffa used two brokers to act as intermediaries to manage the deal to send the waste to two delivery sites in Shenzhen and Guangdong, China.
The first broker took up a request from a Chinese client in April 2015 to arrange shipment of 5,863 metric tons of mixed waste paper by contacting Biffa. A price of around £350,000 (or about $444,400) was agreed for the export, and it was due to take place the following month. At the same time, Biffa agreed with a second broker to ship 4,992 metric tons of mixed paper in a contract worth almost £290,000 (or about $368,000).
The Environment Agency prevented any of the seven containers from leaving Felixstowe.
“Our officers found anything and everything in Biffa’s containers at Felixstowe,” says Sarah Mills, an enforcement manager whose team investigated the breaches for the Environment Agency. “They were marked as waste paper but contained a totally unacceptable level of contamination with other waste. The regulations around shipment of waste were brought in to stop the West merely passing the problem to other countries. It was commonplace in the 1970s and 1980s for developed nations to send vast amounts of waste abroad.
“The waste contained offensive material likely to have been discarded by the receiving country, at great risk and cost to the environment and people,” she continues. “The guilty verdicts justify our decision to prosecute Biffa.”
Biffa pleaded not guilty at an earlier hearing to two counts of breaching regulation 23 of the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations 2007, the Environment Agency reports. However, it is an offence under the regulations to breach article 36 of the European Waste Shipments Regulation 1013/2006, which bans the export of waste collected from households to China.
Judge Simon Auerbach deferred sentencing until Sept. 27. The court was told the Environment Agency and Biffa had agreed a figure of £9,912 (about $12,600) to be paid for proceeds of crime.
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