Graphic by Anjali Rao Herel ‘22
BY LADIN AKCACIOGLU ’23
A while back, I came across an article that shook me to my very core. “Turkey is becoming Europe’s dumping ground,” it said, followed by a gruesome image of a landfill, workers with jaded eyes and threadbare shirts piling the waste into a singular, nauseating heap. They called it “imported trash” — a ghastly hoard of European trash abandoned into once-fertile farmlands.
It turned out Turkey does not stand alone as the world’s dumping ground. After the Chinese government set limitations on its waste imports in 2017 and 2018, many developing countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, India and Taiwan were suitors to the European waste that was too toxic to be handled on Western lands. Many developed countries are able to rid their lands of litter through inexpensive means while filling their recycling quotas, which allows consumers an illusion of reutilization of their waste. However, with the growing rates of non-recyclable waste due to behemothic consumerism and insufficient means of recycling, even the world’s leading trash importers are running short of meadows to be morphed into landfills.
On Monday, Malaysia sent 3,737 tons of waste back to 13 countries, including Britain, France and the United States.
Thailand has momentarily stopped its trash import and is hoping to implement a ban by 2021. Vietnam has stopped issuing licenses to its waste imports. All seem to be slowly awakening except for my home country, Turkey. In 2018, Turkey alone imported 13 million tons of the European Union’s trash.
It has brought attention to the growing environmental crisis and moved the nation to take positive action — including my 83-year-old grandma who has knitted reusable grocery bags for each member of my family. And yet, our beaches are spoiled with litter, our soil is poisoned and piles of trash heap amidst playgrounds, houses and parks.
Moreover, it has disturbed the wages of the Turkish garbage pickers who used to go through dumpsters to find recyclable materials to sell. The people have no say in what gets swept under their carpets.
With the crippled Turkish parliamentary system and a fragile economy, money that comes with the western trash is thought to be an easy way for the desperate Turkish government to create an illusion of prosperity and national wealth in times of an economic crisis. This cannot stand.
The piles of waste heaped upon each other in our oceans and lands are the bleakest example of the failure of our current industrial structure that is far from being sustainable. The United States and the European Union, which are among the largest waste exporters in the world, must acquire viable recycling options instead of making their trash someone else’s problem.