Plastic particles clings to the reeds in a waterway metres from the place Ayhan*, a farmer in Adana, southern Turkey, is harvesting aubergines. “We get pollution from all sides here,” he says, referring to the plastic recycling zone upstream, in addition to a close-by textile plant that he suspects is making the water acidic. “The plastics are all there, by the bank, and the fumes come this way.”
Between May 2021 and July 2024, 13 British corporations despatched 545 shipments of family and grocery store plastic waste, totalling 52,000 tonnes, to the Kemal Deniz recycling zone, underneath a mile from Ayhan’s aubergine fields, based on information analysed for the Guardian by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a world NGO.
New research has also been shared with the Guardian that exhibits excessive ranges of microplastics, in addition to plastic particles, in Adana’s waterways, together with one subsequent to Kemal Deniz.
Fires from deserted piles of unrecyclable plastic in the area create poisonous smoke over neighbourhoods and fields, locals mentioned.
“Every year we install the greenhouse tarps, and when we bring them down we have to clean the surface because we find a black coating, coming from the fumes of these places,” says Ayhan.
In January, canal water flooded on to his land after heavy rain, destroying seven hectares (17 acres) of crops, he claims. “We had to plant new ones. But what can we do? Nothing. Nowhere to file a complaint – nobody cares.”
Adana sits in Turkey’s Çukurova plain, one of the nation’s most fertile areas, wealthy in cotton, soya beans and citrus fruits.
But since China’s 2018 ban on plastic waste imports, Turkey has develop into the main vacation spot for plastic waste from the EU and UK. Adana receives 60% of Turkey’s plastic waste imports – an inflow that has overwhelmed native therapy infrastructure and sparked widespread unlawful actions, together with dumping and burning, based on investigations by environmental groups and journalists.
Sedat Gündoğdu, a Turkish marine biologist at Sabancı University’s Istanbul Policy Center, who has been monitoring air pollution in the area, says many of the recycling services discharge wastewater immediately into canals and channels used for irrigation.
Samples of water he took from a canal downstream from Kemal Deniz, adjoining to Ayhan’s fields, present a 10-fold enhance in concentrations of microplastics in contrast with websites upstream, based on research he published in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment.
Ayhan doesn’t use the canal for irrigation, however the waterway subsequent to his fields feeds into different canals which might be utilized by farmers to water their crops, based on Gündoğdu.
“[The recycling facilities] are discharging this polluted water into the canals,” Gündoğdu says. “Farmers then use that water as an irrigation source.” He additionally discovered pellets, movies and fragments “highly characteristic of recycling processing” waste.
He discovered that different canals downstream of recycling services in Adana separate from these in Kemal Deniz had even better concentrations: at 132-fold that of upstream. The canal community traverses agricultural fields, resulting in the Seyhan River and finally the Mediterranean Sea.
The Kemal Deniz zone is a sprawling, closely guarded website that homes a collection of storage warehouses and recycling services, some with the names of Turkish recycling corporations, some with no seen identification. Piles of plastic lie scattered round the website, inside and outside the services. Security guards on bikes patrol the filth roads round it.
An evaluation of import/export information carried out for the Guardian by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) discovered that 13% of the UK’s exported plastic waste to Turkey was despatched to the Kemal Deniz zone between May 2021 and July 2024. Thirteen British corporations shipped waste, the high three exporters being ProtoGreen, Vanden and Eurokey.
There is not any suggestion that, by delivery plastic waste to Turkey, the British corporations are doing something unlawful. The corporations do, nonetheless, have an obligation underneath varied laws to make sure the plastic they export is recycled in an environmentally sound method.
Turkey is the third-highest contributor to plastic leakage into the Mediterranean from mismanaged waste after Egypt and Italy, based on a 2020 International Union for Conservation of Nature report.
From entanglement and ingestion by marine species to the disruption of meals chains, plastic wreaks havoc on marine life. Microplastics have additionally been discovered to hinder photosynthesis in crops and marine algae, the basis of the ocean meals internet.
People dwelling close to the Kemal Deniz zone who’ve spoken to the Guardian say fires from waste crops in Adana create poisonous smoke over residential areas 4 to 5 occasions a yr.
The metropolis is split alongside socioeconomic strains: the north, the place the rich stay, and the south, made up of poorer residents and migrants, the place the recycling services are positioned, based on Yaşar Gökoğlu, a spokesman for the environmental group Adana Ecology Platform.
“Even under normal working conditions, chemical pollution, water, air and soil pollution negatively affect their lives,” he says.
Last yr, residents protested with Adana Ecology Platform outdoors the metropolis legislation courts, after a blaze at a recycling facility close to the Küçükdikili neighbourhood burned for 36 hours, making a plume of thick poisonous smoke that settled over the neighbourhood and close by fields. The fenced-off facility is simply over a mile north-west of the Kemal Deniz recycling zone. Fires have additionally occurred at Kemal Deniz, based on reports.
Unlike the services at Kemal Deniz – which, the Guardian has established, is provided by British corporations – we couldn’t decide whether or not the plastic waste coming into this facility, half a mile west of Küçükdikili, was imported or home. However, a pile of waste that included British packaging was dumped on the roadside close by.
A businessman, who spoke on situation of anonymity, says: “Every month, between the first and fifth of the month, deliveries come. Trucks line up during those days on the street leading to the facilities.
“There are fires every summer in this area; there is a school right next to it. The neighbourhood is really concerned about it.”
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The man mentioned he had written a letter of grievance about the facility, however had not despatched it. “Who is going to care?” he says.
Much of the plastic arriving in Adana consists of blended, soiled and contaminated plastic that finally ends up deserted and burned, based on native individuals. The Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects estimates that unrecyclable materials makes up virtually 50% of the nation’s plastic waste imports from the EU.
The UK, one of the world’s largest exporters of plastic waste, shipped out 675,000 tonnes in 2025 – its largest quantity in eight years – of which nearly 140,000 tonnes was shipped to Turkey. The EU’s plastic waste exports to Turkey that yr reached more than 500,000 tonnes.
But whereas the EU has recently imposed stricter controls on its plastic waste exports to stop environmental exploitation overseas, the UK authorities continues to export plastic waste – to international locations not half of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a membership of rich international locations.
Amy Youngman, a authorized specialist at the EIA, mentioned: “The highest pollution levels in [Gündoğdu’s] study are directly linked to identifiable industrial sources. UK waste drives the very operations contributing to this pollution, and without it this harm would not occur at this scale, if at all.”
“The UK should take immediate action to end this colonial practice by phasing out plastic waste exports, strengthening traceability and enforcement, regulating microplastics and reducing plastic production to address the root causes of pollution,” she mentioned.
James McLeary, the managing director of Biffa Polymers, mentioned the UK wanted to take “greater responsibility” for its personal plastic waste and has known as for focused reforms. “Plastic waste should be processed within controlled environments in the UK wherever possible, rather than exported,” he mentioned.
The UK authorities ought to ban the export of unprocessed plastic waste, reform the present system that incentivises exporting plastic waste fairly than recycling it domestically and assist home recycling, he added. Over recent years, 21 plastic recycling and processing facilities have closed in the UK.
A spokesperson for Eurokey, one of the high three UK exporters of waste to Turkey, mentioned it solely labored with “accredited partners” permitted by the UK atmosphere company, and was stunned to study of the findings. It not despatched plastic waste to Turkey, they mentioned.
“The reason plastic waste is sent abroad is that there is not enough domestic infrastructure to deal with it, but Eurokey is building its own recycling plant in Corby to address this,” they added.
A spokesperson for Vanden, one other high exporter of waste to Turkey, mentioned: “Any evidence of environmental harm should be investigated by the appropriate competent authority in Turkey.”
Vanden undertook assessments, they mentioned, together with visits and inspections of Turkish recycling services by way of representatives in the nation.
While “no regulatory system can eliminate the risk of non-compliance by individual operators”, they mentioned it could be “inaccurate” to characterise Turkey’s plastic waste import regime as unregulated. The spokesperson added that controls at nationwide and facility stage had “strengthened considerably” over current years.
“We recognise the importance of ensuring that materials exported from the UK are recovered in an environmentally sound manner, and we support robust oversight throughout the recycling supply chain.”
ProtoGreen declined to remark.
A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson mentioned: “There are already strict controls in place on the export of waste set out in UK legislation.
“Businesses involved in the export of waste from the UK are required to ensure that the waste they ship is managed in an environmentally sound manner, and we have already taken action to further reduce our need to export plastic waste.”
The Turkish authorities was approached for remark however didn’t reply.
*Name has been modified to guard id
