Toxic shock...in China...
TOXIC SHOCK: Waste piled high in Lian Jiao, China, is processed by migrant workers. Bottom: Simon Parry with the ten tons of British rubbish that arrived on Thursday
The Green Gauleiters who force us to recycle our rubbish imagine they are saving the planet. Tell that to the Chinese workers and their childrern who are paid £1.70 a day to turn it into yet more unwanted packaging...
Millions of tons of recycled British household waste is being shipped to China - where it is causing an environmental catastrophe.
While local authorities bully UK residents into complying with new 'green' laws that demand painstaking separation of refuse, a Mail on Sunday investigation has uncovered shocking evidence that this 'environmental concern' is little more than a sham.
Town hall officials argue that local recycling schemes - which carry fines if they are not obeyed - are essential to avoid a Britain blighted by landfill sites. But huge amounts of this waste are now being dumped in similar sites on the other side of the world - where it is putting the health of millions of people in jeopardy.
Tons of discarded supermarket food wrappers - from stores such as Tesco, Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer - arrive every day in a town in southern China where mountains of imported plastic and junk have transformed a sleepy backwater into a foul, evil-smelling rubbish dump.
In scenes that will infuriate householders who believe they are aiding green policies by separating their refuse, peasant workers and children as young as three pick through stinking piles of rubbish by hand.
Plastic food wrappers are treated with a chemical and then jet-hosed in a workshop, sending streams of colourings directly into a heavily polluted tributary of China's Pearl River and out into the South China Sea.
Any that is not fit for recycling - about 20 per cent of every ten-ton load - is taken to overflowing landfill sites or burnt, in incinerators or in workshop yards, sending plumes of black smoke into the air.
The Mail on Sunday found a ten-ton consignment of mostly British waste in the town of Lian Jiao, near the southern city of Guangzhou, where migrant workers, aided by their children, earn just £1.70 a day preparing the discarded plastic for recycling.
The British rubbish mountain arrived on Thursday after being shipped to Hong Kong, then taken by boat up the Pearl River to the bustling port of Qing Yuan and driven in ramshackle trucks to Lian Jiao, where more than 30,000 workers from China's poorest provinces scrape a living.
Little more than a month after being sorted into coloured recycling bins in British driveways, the remnants of tens of thousands of supermarket outings were festering in temperatures of 36C (86F).
The trash - spilling out of one-ton Brazilian-made nylon bags - included wrappers for such food items as Tesco prawn and crayfish salad, Bernard Matthews turkey breast and Sainsbury's strawberries.
Other items included a dirty packet for Waitrose German pepper salami with a sell-by date of February 2006, a Walkers crisps packet and a pack of Marks & Spencer party selection cocktail sausages.
The waste sat in fly-blown piles just yards from the river tributary where imported waste floated and a stream of bright red chemical package colouring flowed out of a pipe from a small factory directly into the black, stinking water.
Lorries trundled along the town's dirt roads, bringing in new shipments from the river port 90 minutes' drive away and taking plastic to incinerators and a vast, overflowing landfill site where 100 tons of rubbish is dumped daily.
The booming recycling industry has drawn thousands of migrant workers to Lian Jiao where the £1.70 daily rate is four times what they can earn farming in poor rural provinces.
Many bring their children, who help strip and sort waste plastic after school. Infants are nursed by their mothers as they toil over piles of refuse in grimy workshops.
About 2,000 small companies or migrant families process the rubbish, paying the equivalent of about £200 a ton - far more than it would fetch in Britain. It is washed and chopped up into small pellets to be sold on to nearby plastics factories at a profit of approximately £30 a ton.
But the recycling boom is contributing to massive air and water pollution that has made Guangdong province - one of China's biggest regions, with a population of more than 100million - among the most toxic places on Earth.
Studies by environmental pressure group Greenpeace found that 55 per cent of the precipitation here is acid rain.
Most polluted town in China
Len Li Gen, 37 - who moved his wife Lui Xiao Mei, 36, and 18-month-old daughter Xiao Yu Dian (whose name means Raindrop) 1,000 miles from Henan province to work in Lian Jiao - said: "This is the most polluted town in China. Everyone who has been here says the same.
"The river is black. The air is full of dust. The rubbish we work with is full of disease. When you breathe, your lungs fill with poison. But we have no choice - there is no work for us back home."
Workers from Mr Len's home province have been coming to Lian Jiao for a decade, but most stay only for two or three years.
"Often when people return home, they are weak and they fall ill,' he said. "They have fevers, coughs, skin blemishes. Some develop cancer or lung disease and die within a couple of years, even though they are young."
Looking down at the foul tributary that runs through the town, another worker, Yang Yi Chun, 50, said: "This has to be the dirtiest stretch of river in the world. One day it is black, the next day blue, the next day red, because the workshops wash the dye from the plastic straight into it. If you breathe it in, it stings your lungs."
And Edward Chan, Greenpeace spokesman in Guangdong, called on British consumers to put pressure on recyclers to make sure their waste goes where it can be managed without causing damage.
He said: "People in Britain may be separating their waste with the best of intentions, but much of the environmental problems we have in Guangdong are due to the imported waste.
"Places like Lian Jiao do not have the facilities to deal with it and it causes a lot of environmental harm as well as to the health of the migrant workers."
The Chinese government has attempted to crack down on waste imports and has heavily fined companies for bringing in material without permission. But there is huge demand from Chinese factories for recycled plastic - to make items ranging from bottles and CD cases to duvets and garden sheds.
Most of Britain's waste plastic ends up in the Far East because of the decline in the UK manufacturing industry and the fact that British companies who make plastic products do not have the facilities to process recycled material - they prefer 'virgin' plastic'.
Liverpool-based freight-forwarding firm Warrant Group ships out more than 750 tons of plastic waste a week - nearly 40,000 tons a year. It also exports 750,000 tons of recycled paper and cardboard a year to the Pacific Rim.
Director Ian Jones, 37, said: "These days the biggest export from the UK is waste products. Waste paper, waste plastics and waste metals are in demand in China and the Far East."
Because plastic is not biodegradable, so not suitable for landfill sites, the Environment Agency allows 'clean, separated and sorted plastic waste' to be exported from Britain without controls.
A spokeswoman said: "We want to encourage legitimate export markets, and if it is going overseas and not to landfill sites that is a better option. But we will take action if the material is what we call mixed waste, which is contaminated, when it leaves Britain."
Recycling expert Kay Twitchen, a board member of the Environment Agency, admitted she was 'disgusted and appalled' by The Mail on Sunday's findings. She said: "There is an imbalance and a lot of plastic does end up in the Third World
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