UK plastic 'waste colonialism' found to be polluting Turkey's farming heartland

Adana's Contaminated Canals

The Guardian's investigation centers on the Çukurova plain near Adana, one of Turkey's most fertile agricultural basins. Marine biologist Sedat Gündoğdu of Sabancı University's Istanbul Policy Center took samples from a canal downstream of a major recycling hub and found microplastic concentrations roughly 10 times higher than at upstream sites. The polluted waterway floods into surrounding farmland after heavy rain, raising direct concerns about food safety on land that feeds much of southern Turkey. Gündoğdu's research, published in Environment Monitoring and Assessment, also identified pellets, films, and fragments "highly characteristic" of recycling processing, pointing squarely at the adjacent facilities rather than at diffuse consumer litter.

The contamination does not stop at the field edge. From the recycling zone, plastic-laden wastewater eventually reaches the Mediterranean Sea, compounding the marine plastic crisis in a body of water already under severe pressure. The burden falls disproportionately on Adana's poorer residents, who live closest to the recycling operations and whose crops depend on the same irrigation canals now laced with microplastics.

The UK's Export Pipeline

Britain is among the world's largest plastic waste exporters, shipping 675,000 tonnes abroad in 2025, its highest figure in eight years. Of that, 139,000 tonnes went to Turkey. Between May 2021 and July 2024, 13 British companies dispatched 545 shipments totalling 52,000 tonnes to just eight facilities inside the Adana recycling zone, according to data analysis by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) for the Guardian. There is no suggestion of illegality, but British exporters carry a legal duty to ensure their waste is recycled in an environmentally sound manner, a standard the EIA argues the system routinely fails to meet.

The EU exported more than 500,000 tonnes to Turkey in 2025, up 19% year on year, making Turkey the bloc's single largest waste destination. The pattern reflects a structural imbalance: rich nations offload low-value, hard-to-recycle plastic onto countries with weaker enforcement capacity, a dynamic the EIA's Amy Youngman describes as a "devastating" transfer of human health, economic, and environmental harm onto Turkish communities.

Treaty Talks and Loopholes

The UK government publicly committed to reducing plastic pollution and phasing out harmful plastics during negotiations for a global plastics treaty, but those talks collapsed last year and are not expected to resume until 2027. Britain has stopped short of banning exports outright, leaving a regulatory gap that campaigners say fuels the Adana pollution. A 2021 Turkish ban on polyethylene, the polymer that makes up 94% of UK plastic waste exports including yoghurt pots, salad bags, and plastic film, was rolled back under pressure from the recycling industry, illustrating how industry lobbying can override environmental commitments on both sides of the trade.

The EU is now tightening its own rules: from November, plastic waste exports to most non-OECD countries will be banned. Campaigners warn that, because Turkey is an OECD member and already the EU's main waste destination, the new rules could redirect more European plastic toward Adana, intensifying the very problem the legislation was meant to address. The Defra spokesperson quoted in the investigation insists existing UK controls are "strict" and that further action has been taken to reduce the need to export, but offered no commitment to ending the practice.