High levels of microplastics found in Turkish waterway near recycling hub supplied by UK

High levels of microplastics and other plastic contamination have been discovered in a waterway close to a major recycling hub in Turkey supplied with plastic waste by British companies.

The polluted waterway, which floods into agricultural fields after heavy rain, feeds into a larger canal used for irrigating crops on the Çukurova plain, in the city of Adana, in the south of the country. It is one of the largest and most fertile agricultural basins in Turkey.

The findings from a Guardian investigation reignite concerns over Britain’s continuing role in “waste colonialism” – a term used to describe the export of plastic waste by rich nations to poorer countries with less regulated waste management.

The UK government pledged to reduce plastic pollution and eliminate harmful plastics during talks to reach a global plastics treaty, which collapsed last year, but it has not committed to a ban on exports. Treaty negotiations are expected to resume in 2027.

Britain, one of the world’s largest exporters of plastic waste, exported 675,000 tonnes in 2025, its largest amount in eight years, of which 139,000 tonnes was shipped to Turkey. The EU’s plastic waste exports to Turkey that year rose 19% on the year before to more than 500,000 tonnes.

Environmental campaigners in the UK and Turkey say that British and EU plastic waste exports are driving the operations responsible for the pollution, leaving the city’s poorer residents to pay the price.

About 13% of UK plastic waste to Turkey was shipped to eight facilities within the recycling zone in Adana between May 2021 and July 2024, according to an analysis of import and export data carried out for the Guardian by an international NGO, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

Thirteen British companies sent 545 shipments, totalling 52,000 tonnes, of plastic waste to the hub during the three-year period. There is no suggestion that the companies exporting plastic waste are acting illegally. British exporters of plastic waste do, however, have a duty under various regulations to ensure that the plastic they export is recycled in an environmentally sound manner.

Sedat Gündoğdu, a Turkish marine biologist at Sabancı University’s Istanbul Policy Center, who conducted the microplastic sampling, has called for a ban on all plastic imports to Turkey. “The discharge of microplastic-laden wastewater into irrigation canals raises critical concerns about agricultural contamination and food safety,” he said.

Plastic pollution from recycling centres that contaminates canals ultimately ends up in the Mediterranean Sea, he added, which “exacerbates marine plastic accumulation” and undermines efforts to protect the sea from contamination.

Samples taken from the canal downstream from the recycling zone were 10 times higher than upstream sites, according to Gündoğdu’s research, published in Environment Monitoring and Assessment. He also found pellets, films and fragments “highly characteristic of [waste] recycling processing”, he said.

He has called for mandatory installation of microplastic filtration at all facilities and independent monitoring of all wastewater discharges in agricultural zones.

Amy Youngman, a legal specialist at the EIA, said that, by its continued reliance on exporting rather than investing in reduction or domestic recycling, the UK had failed to “keep pace with the EU” and had created a “structural imbalance”.

“This results in pollution occurring overseas in ways that would not be tolerated within the UK itself and passes the devastating human health, economic and environmental harm to communities in Turkey,” she said.

The findings added to an “expanding body of irrefutable evidence exposing waste colonialism in the UK’s waste-export system”, she said.

A Greenpeace investigation in 2021 found plastic waste from British supermarkets waste dumped and burned in Adana. The same year, the Turkish government announced a ban on certain waste, including polyethylene, which is used in 94% of UK plastic waste exports including yoghurt pots, salad bags and plastic film, but revoked the ban after pressure from the recycling industry.

The EU has recently imposed strict controls on plastic waste exports. From November, exports other than to mostly rich OECD countries will be banned. Environmentalists fear this could lead to more exports to Turkey, an OECD country and already the main importer of EU waste.

A spokesperson for the UK’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs said: “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 government was approached for comment but did not respond.