Nihan Ataş: UK is responsible for extensive overseas plastic dumping

Nihan Temiz Ataş, the biodiversity project lead at the environmental pressure group Greenpeace Mediterranean has laid into the UK’s record of overseas plastic dumping.

She told a Defra committee session this afternoon that current regulations are not working, giving the example of Turkey, as “the gaps can easily be broken on paper”, recommending a total ban on exports.

She said that in Turkey 80 per cent of the plastic surveyed belonged to the UK.

Ataş also said the data further “confirms this” because over the last three years Turkey imported 481,000 tonnes of plastic just from the UK.