“According to documentation received at the time of booking, the commodity carried is not in violation of the Basel Convention.”Ī shipment of PVC plastic, sent by New Jersey-based Scan-Shipping on a ship operated by Maersk, the Danish shipping company, that left Newark on Feb. In a statement, CMA CGM Group said it was “totally committed to responsible trade” and would not knowingly violate international standards.
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“Sigma has followed all the rules and regulations to best of our knowledge,” the statement said.
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In a statement, Sigma said its shipment involved “clean pre-sorted plastic scrap” and that the company was confident it would be accepted by Malaysian customs. China, which once accepted the bulk of that waste, in 2018 banned all plastic scrap shipments, declaring that it no longer wanted to be the “world’s garbage dump.” Though many American communities dutifully collect plastic for recycling, much of the scrap has been sent overseas, where it frequently ends up in landfills, or in rivers, streams and the ocean. Underlying the change was the need to stem the flow of waste from America, and other wealthier nations, to poorer ones. The new rules were adopted in 2019 by most of the world’s countries, although the United States isn’t among them, under a framework known as the Basel Convention.
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Recent history, however, shows that a large of amount plastic scrap exported from the United States does not get recycled but ends up as waste, a reality that was the impetus for the new rules. The scrap industry says that many of the exports are quite likely compliant with the new rules and that the increase in January reflects growing global demand for plastic to recycle, and use as inputs for new products.