The Environment Agency said today that the bales had been landfilled and claimed that “no recycling company in the UK would process the material because of the state they were in.”
But, with confirmation by the Agency that the bales were not found to contain medical waste – as claimed by the Brazilian authorities – questions have been asked as to why some of the material was not recycled.
One industry expert told letsrecycle.com that it could have been sensible to have processed some of the bales from 91 containers in a materials recycling facility at the landfill used which is situated in Great Blakenham, near Ipswich.
And, pictures of some of the bales appear to confirm that plastic bottles were the largest component of the bale with some paper and plastic film also evident.
Another recycling expert, who did not wish to be named, said: “I think the Agency needs to think about the environment here. Yes, this looks like commingled material which can't go abroad but we should have been able to recycle some of it now it has been sent back. The bales could have been looked and assessed as suitable or not for recycling.”
Nevertheless, the Agency stood firm in its view to letsrecycle.com that the material was contaminated and that papers in the bales were dirty so requiring disposal to landfill at the Viridor-owned site in Great Blakenham which is near to the port of Felixstowe where the shipment came back to.
Legal
Now the Agency is to finalise its legal case over the exports which were rejected by Brazil in a highly public fashion earlier this year. However, Brazil is one of the world's largest recyclers of plastics and remains keen to receive suitable material.
In July 2009, the Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva appeared to imply that there was medical waste in the material which was eventually returned to the UK. He attacked richer nations “who export waste for reprocessing in poorer countries” while he was opening the Bio Brazil Fair 2009 in Sao Paulo on July 22. 
President Lula then added: “They say it is a clean order of material coming here to be recycled. Who will recycle used condoms and syringes? We do not want to export our waste to other countries and did not want to import waste. We want to import other things that are not waste” (see letsrecycle.com story).
In the UK, recently (see letsrecycle.com story) Wiltshire police have bailed the three men arrested in connection with the alleged illegal export of waste from the UK to Brazil for a second time because the investigation into the incident is taking longer than anticipated.
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