DILIGENTLY recycling your rubbish may not be saving the planet after all: it could just mean dumping the problem on poor countries at the far side of the globe.

Ireland’s “green” waste is mostly sent abroad, and the Environmental Protection Agency cannot say what happens to it. But international waste brokers reckon that much of the 800,000 tons of recycled rubbish that Ireland exports every year goes to China, where labour and environmental controls are lax.

Kevin May, a campaign manager with Greenpeace in Hong Kong, says that the amount of waste coming into China in recent years has increased sharply. “It’s very irresponsible of developed countries to export this to developing world countries,” he said.

“Although China has environmental standards, they’re not high and have not been enforced effectively, as you can see from pollution levels here.”

May describes Chinese fields piled high with rubbish and underpaid, migrant and child workers operating in dangerous conditions for little money.

Precious metals harvested from electrical and electronic “e-waste”, such as lead and mercury, are melted on campfires in the open air with no safety equipment and toxic wastes run from recycling plants directly into rivers, he claims. Chinese environmental authorities have found that more than 70% of the water in five of the country’s seven major river systems is unsuitable for human contact.

“The Chinese will take anything, sorted, cleaned or not,” said one British broker, who claimed that European recycling firms, which have to abide by stricter rules, are at a disadvantge.

“I went around Ireland trying to buy bottles for recycling in the UK but we just couldn’t compete. I even saw a dead dog in one bale bound for China.”

Of Ireland’s “green list” waste — usually bales of materials such as paper and plastics separated from mixed rubbish — 72% was exported in 2002, according to the EPA, up from 55% the year before.

“It’s very hard to track everything — we don’t go to outer Mongolia to check it,” said Gerry Byrne, an EPA programme manager. “The bureaucratic burden on such material is reduced — it’s ‘green list’ and not subject to tracking. If it’s mixed we must be notified. If it’s separated it can go wherever it wants.

“I’d be reasonably satisfied that it is being recycled. The value you get from giving recyclable material to a collector is definitely better than sticking it into the ground, but what standards they adopt in China is a matter for themselves.

“It can be a real nasty world out there and it is a part of the market economy. People do silly things and think they’re making a quick buck on it.”

Each person in Ireland generates an average of 10 times their body weight in rubbish each year. But an EPA survey given to all handlers and exporters of waste is the only official means of establishing where Irish recycled rubbish goes. The EPA says that a question about the waste’s destination is “not always filled in, or might just state Northern Ireland or Europe”.

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