Walking along canals and beaches around Adana, in southern Turkey, we found discarded packaging for mozzarella from France, wet wipes from Holland, tortellini from Spain and fertilizer from Germany. Ice cream tubs from Britain exhorted consumers to recycle.<\/p>\n
The piles of refuse were part of the plastic waste imports that Turkey receives each year. Last year, the plastic waste sent by European countries exceeded 700,000 tons \u2014 a record, according to trade data. All of it was destined for Turkey\u2019s recycling industry.<\/p>\n
Much of it was recycled \u2014 into plastic bags, irrigation pipes and plastic pellets that manufacturers use to make new products. But a lot of it ended up in the environment alongside great quantities of Turkish trash, both contributing to the very pollution that recycling is supposed to prevent.<\/p>\n
Unlike the simple circularity suggested by the recycling symbol, recycling is messy and generates waste. Local officials, scientists, activists and recyclers told us that Turkey\u2019s environmental regulations often failed to prevent that extra waste from being burned, dumped or discharged with wastewater.<\/p>\n
We drove from Adana\u2019s recycling factories along canals flowing south, and saw the flow of plastic runoff all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.<\/p>\n
Scientists told us that plastic shredded during the recycling process had washed up as far away as Antalya, 250 miles west, where Turkey is hosting COP31<\/a>, the United Nations climate summit, which began on Monday. The experts cautioned, however, that the farther waste travels, the harder it is to pinpoint its source.<\/p>\n At the summit, Turkey is highlighting its \u201cZero Waste<\/a>\u201d initiative, seeking to promote global waste reduction and inviting conference delegates to visit a Zero Waste Museum, with exhibits about the resources that can be saved when glass, metals and plastic are recycled.<\/p>\n The Zero Waste program is championed by Emine Erdogan, the wife of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.<\/p>\n Ms. Erdogan told attendees at an environmental conference in June that waste reduction was critical to the Earth\u2019s environmental future.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile there are many ways to fight climate change, zero waste is a bridge that connects them all,\u201d she said. \u201cIn fact, it is the most transformative force in the climate struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n We recently asked Turkey\u2019s environment minister, Murat Kurum, about the European trash we saw on Adana\u2019s beaches. He said that it had been imported illegally, and that the companies that brought it in had been penalized or shut down. He did not name the companies.<\/p>\n He sought to distinguish between discarded materials that recyclers could use to make new products, and mere garbage.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t import trash,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Officials and residents said the rise in imported waste had worsened air, land and water pollution around Adana, where plastic, both imported and domestic, plugged irrigation canals, taxed the water treatment facility and often caught fire, filling neighborhoods with noxious fumes<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis neighborhood is just covered in trash,\u201d said Burhan Kurt, a local official in Onur, a part of Adana with many recycling facilities. \u201cWhy is Adana the place for Europe\u2019s trash?\u201d<\/p>\n The Waste Capital<\/p>\n Adana, a city of 1.9 million known for hot weather and spicy kebabs<\/a>, sits on a fertile plain extending to the Mediterranean Sea. Recycling factories line its roads. Piles of trash, both imported and domestic, teeter in the backs of trucks, near the factories and in cavernous hangars where laborers, many of them Syrian refugees, sort the refuse.<\/p>\n Scientists are studying how microplastics, plastic particles smaller than five millimeters across, affect human health. Some research has suggested links between microplastics in the body and strokes, heart attacks and other health disorders.<\/p>\n Two Turkish scientists recently found<\/a> that water flowing through Adana canals contained more microplastics after passing by recycling facilities.<\/p>\n Downstream water in one canal contained 21 times more than upstream water, they wrote. The downstream level in another canal was 132 times higher.<\/p>\n The study called Adana\u2019s recyclers \u201ca significant and active point source of microplastic pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n Other studies also have documented plastic seeping from Adana\u2019s recyclers into the environment.<\/p>\n In an interview, Kemal Deniz, the overseer of a complex housing dozens of recycling businesses, said his recyclers followed all government regulations, and he accused unidentified scofflaws of causing pollution.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people dump stuff on the beaches,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is the state\u2019s job to find out who. How would I know?\u201d<\/p>\n Part of the problem is that plastic is hard to recycle, and the process itself generates waste. That is because what we call plastic includes a variety of compounds, often with added chemicals to enhance flexibility, strength or other properties. It must be sorted, cleaned and shredded for recycling, which creates debris.<\/p>\n Removing added chemicals requires more complex processes that also generate refuse.<\/p>\n And plastic degrades each time it is recycled, reducing its value, unlike glass and steel, which maintain their integrity.<\/p>\n Also, many imported waste shipments include a portion of material that recyclers can\u2019t use. Recyclers can legally send this to cement factories for incineration, often for a fee.<\/p>\n Some instead get rid of it illegally, recycling workers told us.<\/p>\n \u201cThey dump it in the blind spots of the city, burn it or dump it in the sea,\u201d said Kursat Karaca, a recycler who opposes waste imports because he thinks Turkey should focus on its own trash.<\/p>\n Some recycling facilities lack the specialized equipment needed to remove plastic from their wastewater, said Deda Buyukozturk, the head of an environmental office for Adana Province. So it often ends up in canals or at the water treatment plant, which was not designed to handle large quantities of plastic.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are the city that suffers the most from this plastic waste,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n He said banning waste imports was the only solution, echoing calls made by Turkish environmentalists.<\/p>\n Around Adana, we found mounds of waste illegally dumped along roadsides, near farmland and along canals, some containing European packaging. We saw plastic shards in canals near recycling factories.<\/p>\n In an interview, Sedat Gundogdu, a co-author of the report about Adana\u2019s canals, called Europe\u2019s waste exports a kind of \u201ccolonialism,\u201d which allowed more developed countries to pass the environmental and health costs of their refuse to less developed ones.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not recycling,\u201d said Dr. Gundogdu, a marine biologist at Cukurova University<\/a> in Adana. \u201cThis is pollution transfer.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokeswoman for the European Commission said, \u201cThe E.U. is not exporting its waste problem to third countries.\u201d<\/p>\n South of Adana, we saw a steady stream of small pieces of colored plastic, which experts identified as recycling runoff, flowing down Adana\u2019s main drainage canal. That canal merges into the Seyhan River before entering the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n In places, the waste gathered under bridges, creating large plastic islands.<\/p>\n In Karacercili, a village on the canal, we found a farmer, Cumali Ucaroglu, 40, unclogging his irrigation pump.<\/p>\n \u201cThe motor is full of shredded plastic,\u201d he said. \u201cIt all comes from the plastic recycling factories.\u201d<\/p>\n In Baharli, a village near the sea, a fisherman, Tufan Tuna, said marine animals ate the plastic.<\/p>\n \u201cWe find plastic inside the fish,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Sun and Plastic<\/p>\n In 2022, Olgac Guven, an ocean scientist at Akdeniz University<\/a> in Antalya, investigated shredded plastic trash that had begun washing up on beaches south of Adana, he said.<\/p>\n He traced the waste\u2019s source to canals from Adana and reported his findings to Turkey\u2019s environment ministry, he said. He doesn\u2019t know whether his report prompted any action.<\/p>\n The ministry did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Then, during the last two summers, similar plastic showed up in Antalya, the site of the climate summit, whose gleaming beaches are a pillar of Turkey\u2019s tourism industry, he said. This waste, too, had been mechanically sliced, which Dr. Guven said pointed to Adana\u2019s recyclers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe gates of hell opened,\u201d he said, recalling fear that polluted beaches would deter tourists.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we are selling here is sun and sea,\u201d he said. \u201cSo if you have a polluted sea, you don\u2019t have anything to sell.\u201d<\/p>\n Recycling runoff has also tarred beaches in Mersin, the province between Adana and Antalya, said Emre Uresin, the Mersin representative for Turkey\u2019s Chamber of Chemical Engineers.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen summer comes, we get huge numbers of complaints,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The spokeswoman for the European Commission said that strict rules govern E.U. waste exports, and that the commission monitors whether importing countries can handle the refuse in \u201can environmentally sound manner.\u201d<\/p>\n