Authorities in Britain arrested three people Thursday over the alleged illegal shipment of tonnes of waste including baby diapers and syringes to Brazil, officials said Thursday.
Environment Agency officers also raided three properties in Swindon in southwest England as part of their probe into the shipments of 1,400 tonnes of rubbish improperly labelled as recyclable plastic.
Liz Parkes, head of the Environment Agency's waste and resource management, said the arrests marked significant progress in its investigation into the origin of the 99 shipping containers.
"The United Kingdom has taken a strong global lead to stamp out the illegal waste trade, in order to protect people and the environment," Parkes said in a statement.
"The Environment Agency enforces the export of recyclable waste from England and Wales and will not hesitate to prosecute any company or individuals found to have breached the strict laws on the export of waste," Parkes said.
Authorities in Brazil were indignant after the discovery of the waste earlier this month, with the chief of the country's state environmental agency saying: "Brazil is not the world's dump."
Agency officers here planned to search through the rubbish once it has been returned from Brazil to Britain, and ensure it was disposed of properly.
The waste included used diapers, syringes, condoms, batteries, food remains, used packages of cleaning products and cloth, according to Brazilian news reports. Hazardous clinical waste was also discovered, reports here said.
However the containers, which had been unloaded in three southern ports in Brazil, had been marked as containing only plastic for recycling.
Reports have said several British companies were involved in the shipments.
The United Nations-administered Basel Convention, which came into force in 1992, bans shipments of illegal waste from industrialized countries.
Plastics, paper and other goods are commonly shipped around the world for recycling.
The three men arrested cannot be named for legal reasons.
The maximum penalty for illegally exporting waste in Britain is an unlimited fine or two years in prison.
Share This Article With Planet Earth
