The Environment Agency is to lead a new international crime group as part of Interpol to help tackle illegal dumping of electrical waste on developing countries.

The Interpol Global Crime Group is a worldwide intelligence-led operation which includes environmental crime investigators in the United States and Europe such as the US Environmental Protection Agency. The group will investigate links between organised criminal networks and the “waste tourists” travelling to countries like Britain to arrange the export of waste to developing countries.

Waste tourists are people who visit the UK as tourists with the intention of organising the purchase and export of waste. Often they are paid for taking waste for “recycling” when they are just going to dump it. The EA say that the waste tourist’s typically short stay makes it very difficult to bring them to justice.

The new group will better co-ordinate the exchange of intelligence between environment agencies.

EA waste and resource management policy advisor Adrian Harding told MRW: “We are working with the relevant agencies and others who recognised that export of e-waste is an international issue.

“It is often coming out of the US and European countries and illegally being specifically sent to
countries in West Africa.”

Harding said that the EA will gather intelligence and take effective action on people involved in this trade and “hopefully the joint investigations will bring this to an end”.

He explained that twelve people had been arrested so far in connection with the illegal export of waste and said that most people involved in illegal e-waste exports can often be involved with other criminal activities including illegal export of alcohol or cigarettes and workers.

Harding explained that more unannounced inspection checks will be made at ports and the EA has new powers to put stop notices on ship containers.

The most high profile case saw three men arrested in connection with the shipment of thousands of tonnes of toxic waste, including nappies and hospital waste, to Brazil (see MRW story).

Harding said: “We hope to identify where the waste has come from. Has it come from a local authority civic amenity site, the commercial sector or public sector bodies?”

EA chairman Lord Chris Smith added: “Investigations have found that each year thousands of tonnes of waste electrical equipment are shipped from Europe and America to developing countries to be stripped down – often by children under appalling conditions – to extract valuable metals such as gold, copper and aluminium.

“This is unacceptable. It is essential that we work with our counterparts in other countries too share intelligence and stamp out the growing problem of illegal waste exports. The group’s aim is to tackle an international problem with an international response.”

Interesting facts

• The EA’s National Environmental Crime Team is currently carrying out eight separate investigations into the export of e-waste;
• The EA carried out more than double the number of unannounced site inspections of operators that export waste in the first six months of 2009 (166), compared with the whole of 2008 (72).