Waste Crime - Waste Risks: Gaps in Meeting the Global Waste Challenge

land in large shipping containers. The items are sometimes hidden in other cargo and sent across porous border areas, such as those between China and Vietnam or the Beilun River and Beibu Bay in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. In some cases, to avoid arrest, smugglers also traverse frontier areas in northeastern China instead of the more commonly used southeastern coastal areas. The Indian subcontinent is also an important destination for European waste. Household recyclable streams, metals, textiles, and tires are exported to India and Pakistan. There is a significant trade in compressors to Pakistan. These should be depolluted prior to export, but waste operators seeking to avoid expense often omit this step. Based on preliminary research on e-waste trafficking by UNEP in 2013, the EU, the US, Japan, and Korea were the main origins of e-waste shipments. China, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, and a few other countries were the main destinations.

Kong might still serve as a transit port for importing plastics, paper, metals, and hazardous waste.

According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, China imported 54.85 million tonnes of waste in 2013. Three provinces, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu, are considered to be the top three destinations of large quantities of legally imported waste. All three provinces lie on the southeast coast of East China. The amount of waste shipments from the US is also enormous. It was reported that 75 per cent of the aluminium scrap, 60 per cent of scrap paper, and 50 per cent of scrap plastic that US exports went to China (The Christian Science Monitor 2013). In 2013, as a result of Operation Green Fence (see section on New Patterns below), China’s authorities confiscated 976 500 tonnes of illegal waste material, and intercepted 221 instances of smuggling solid waste – including hazardous waste, used vehicle parts and tires, textiles, and e-waste – mainly from the US, Europe, and Japan. 23 Smugglers collude with their overseas counterparts, who declare the items as “other articles” in order to get through customs checks and transport them to the Chinese main-

23. China.org.cn (2014). Solid waste smuggling sees threefold rise. [Online]. 27/05/2014. Available from: http://www.china.org.cn/environ- ment/2014-05/27/content_32499228.htm

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