A major global investigation has exposed the dangerous realities of overseas recycling factories and insufficient safeguarding in Britain.
In total, it is believed more than 200 boys and men have been killed or shredded in Turkish recycling factories over the past decade. The shocking revelations have come to light through a new true-crime podcast, Boy Wasted, produced by Smoke Trail Productions with funding from the Journalism Fund Europe, and published by ENDS Report, and Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer.
After befriending a group of refugees working in a recycling plant, journalist Adnan Khan was shown a photo of a child killed in a shredding accident and began looking into the victim’s identity and the cause of death.
This led to the organisation ISIG Meclisi, which tracks workplace fatalities in Turkey. The organisation conducted the first analysis into the dangers and record of recycling plants, and discovered two people are crushed, ripped or burned to death within the sector each month, a consistent trend spanning the past 10 years.
According to a Greenpeace analysis of UN Comtrade data, the UK was currently the largest exporter of waste to Turkey in 2023, adding to growing concerns about regulatory weakness, legal loopholes and outdated practices in both Britain and Western Europe. The result is a sector vulnerable to criminal exploitation, with a thriving illegal market in which waste is misclassified, and regularly diverted from legitimate routes leading to pollution and unsafe handling.
This under-resourcing is considered a direct influence on how recycling is processed, including the use of overseas facilities. However, of the 9million waste containers passing through UK ports each year, just 0.02% is inspected by the Environment Agency due to insufficient funding. According to the Boy Wasted report, this is a central problem in a story of waste being illegally exported to destinations where it can cause environmental harm and even pose a danger to human life.
‘We knew that plastic is piling up, contaminating the oceans and our blood. But even in our worst hypotheses, we never guessed secret bodies were piling up too,’ said Dan Ashby, co-presenter and producer of the series. ‘Boy Wasted cuts open the bales of plastic Britain packs off overseas, and takes you into a bloody underworld that we are all enabling. You will never look at a recycling logo in the same way again.’
‘You dutifully put plastic waste in your recycling bin, but do you really know where it ends up? Our investigation reveals that the UK is sending a tidal wave of trash over to Turkey with vanishingly few checks carried out at our ports – fuelling a black market with an appalling human cost,’ added Jamie Carpenter, ENDS Report editor. ‘Given today’s politicians are obsessed with stopping the boats, perhaps they should be taking a much closer look at the vessels that leave these shores every day laden with huge volumes of our plastic waste.’
You can listen to the full podcast series here.
Image: Sigmund / Unsplash
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