Hefty fines, prison sentences for Jiangsu waste smugglers

Two people have been given hefty fines and prison sentences for smuggling 2,600 tons of solid waste from Europe and North America into the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu.

According to the procurator in Suzhou, the waste was shipped to Zhangjiagang before being transported to other cities in the province, including Lianyungang and Jiangyin, for classification and re-use.

It was smuggled into the country by a trading company in Anhui province through a company based in Canada.

The Canadian company collected solid waste from North America and then the Anhui company smuggled it into China using fake shipping documents.

“The trash contained great amounts of hair, plastic bags and medical waste,” said Yu Kunxiang, an officer from the local procuratorate.

“It was collected from recycling bins in communities and commercial areas before being shipped directly to China.”

He said the smell of the containers holding the trash was suffocating and that some customs officers who helped check the shipments had developed respiratory tract infections and skin allergies.

The Anhui company was fined 1.5 million yuan ($241,800) and the person in charge, named Cui, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. A woman named Gao, in charge of the Canadian company, was sentenced to seven years in prison. The Canadian company was fined 800,000 yuan.

“Some developed countries used to transport as much as 70 percent of their solid waste to China,” said Zhao Zhangyuan, a former researcher from the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences.

“Many coastal cities in China have been seriously polluted as a result of this,” Zhao said.

“China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection has put forward regulations to ban harmful rubbish from entering the country, but some companies and organizations still illegally smuggle it, in pursuit of profits.”

According to the procuratorate of Suzhou, waste paper from the shipment could have been sold at 2,000 yuan a ton, aluminum cans around 4,000 yuan, and plastic products 7,000 yuan.

It cost about 1,000 yuan to import the waste to China, and the content that could not be recycled cost 60 yuan a ton to be transferred for disposal by other recycling companies.

Every year, China imports a huge amount of waste for recycling, according to customs in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

Some waste — such as newspapers and magazines, that contains impurities of less than 1.5 percent — are is imported legally, it said.

But waste that endangers the environment and costs a lot to recycle, especially household garbage, is banned from entering the country.

“It is irresponsible and immoral for some countries to export their garbage to other countries,” Zhao said.

“No transfer of cross-border pollution should be allowed.”

Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper reported on Saturday that a document released recently by the country‘s Environmental Protection Agency showed that 12 million tons of garbage is transported to China every year.

In Feb 2012, customs in Suzhou detained and sent back to the Netherlands 30 containers holding 763 tons of waste.

Five other cases involving more than 4,000 tons of smuggled waste were reported in Jiangsu province later in the year.

In 2011, 1,121 cases of illegally imported solid waste — containing 10,400 tons of waste metal, 16,000 tons of waste plastic, and 250,500 tons of other waste — were reported in China.

Another coastal province, Guangdong, had uncovered more than 30 cases of imported solid waste totaling 25 tons by the end of last month.

That waste contained LCD monitors, video equipment and computer hard disks.

The province has now launched a 10-month campaign to improve the supervision of solid waste imports and fight against waste smuggling.

Contact the writers at cangwei@chinadaily.com.cn and songwenwei@chinadaily.com.cn