Muck, bucks and impunity

Monday 28th December, 2020

Stinking landfills and waste imports are likely to earn Sri Lanka, which was once known as ‘the Granary of the East’, the epithet of ‘Garbage Dump of the East’. An investigation is reportedly underway into the importation of 28 shipping containers of agricultural waste from Ukraine. The waste arrived here, the other day, in the guise of a consignment of coriander seeds. One of the companies that imported the foreign garbage has claimed that it has been cheated; it says it ordered coriander seeds but received agricultural waste instead. This sounds a tall tale. Only a thorough probe will help establish the veracity or otherwise of this claim. The import of waste looks a well-organised racket. The possibility of shiploads of waste from Ukraine having already been dumped here cannot be ruled out.

The Ukrainian waste has arrived close on the heels of the conclusion of a successful legal battle against a move to dump British garbage in this country. More than 260 containers holding tons of rubbish were imported from the UK in 2017 and 2018. They contained hospital waste among other things. The Customs, the media and environmentalists fought quite a battle to thwart sinister attempts in some quarters to sweep the issue under the carpet and have the containers released. Finally, the UK agreed to take back its waste.

Where there’s muck, there’s brass, and it is not surprising why some Sri Lankan companies run by a bunch of greedy parvenus have taken to importing waste to make a fast buck. They are apparently all out to make the most of China’s decision to stop waste imports with effect from next year. The Chinese policy will affect many countries which are currently exporting their waste to China. The US was among the biggest exporters of waste to China, which recycled it at a profit, but subsequently the quality of recyclables dropped drastically with the waste consignments containing non-recyclable materials and even contaminants. China launched the Operation Green Fence to rid itself of foreign waste, having developed its economy, which is reportedly set to overtake America’s in eight years or so.

The waste exporting nations are now looking for rubbish dumps in other parts of the world. There is bound to be a feeding frenzy among waste importers in the developing world. The developed nations are likely to turn to this country, where anything goes if the palms of politicians and bureaucrats are greased sufficiently. The Sri Lanka-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (SLSFA) signed during the previous government provides for the disposal of foreign waste here. This is one of the reasons why the controversial pact ran into stiff resistance at this end. The yahapalana administration was in a mighty hurry to implement the SLSFA, but had to shelve it, unable to overcome opposition.

This country has failed to solve its own garbage problem. Mountains of waste have come up in some suburbs of Colombo over the decades. These landfills have made the areas around them virtually uninhabitable. How bad the situation will become unless steps are taken to stop foreign waste from finding its way here is not difficult to imagine.

The need for imposing deterrent punishment on the companies that import foreign waste and aggravate the environmental pollution here cannot be overemphasised. They have been carrying out this racket with impunity. Will Minister of Environment Mahinda Amaraweera ensure that the environmental laws are fully enforced and/or given more teeth, if necessary, to prevent the country from becoming the landfill of Asia? He has said legal action will be taken as regards waste imports in keeping with the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. Surely, there are international conventions and laws we can rely on to prevent foreign waste being dumped here. But this problem can be tackled easily with the help of domestic laws if they are properly enforced. Will Minister Amaraweera explain the alleged delay on the part of the Customs and the Central Environmental Authority in taking legal action against the company responsible for importing British waste?