Fights over mislabelled Canadian trash have been going on for 6 years
— from The Canadian Press —
Sixty-nine shipping containers of fetid trash are on their way back to Canada, after being loaded onto a container ship in the Philippines port of Subic.
The last container was put aboard the MV Bavaria shortly after 3 a.m. Friday in the Philippines.
Earlier in the day, Philippines Foreign Secretary Teddy Locsin posted video and photos to his Twitter account showing the containers being loaded onto the ship.
The ship departed for Vancouver from the Philippine port after dawn Friday. Canada has previously said it expected the garbage to be back on Canadian soil by the end of June.
Canadian officials from the embassy in Manila monitored the loading.
A Canadian official confirmed the ship was hired under a $1.14-million contract Canada signed with the Canadian arm of French shipping giant Bolloré Logistics to bring the garbage back to Canada. He said the containers were fumigated and cleaned before being loaded.
The garbage has become a diplomatic nightmare for the Canadian government as Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte makes an example of Canada for trying to dump its trash on his country. It has also become a symbol of the shadiness of the global recycling industry, which sees millions of tonnes of plastics meant for recycling ending up in garbage dumps and incinerators overseas.
The Canadian containers arrived in the Philippines in 2013 and 2014 falsely labelled as being full of recycling plastics. Philippine customs authorities inspected the containers and discovered about two-thirds of them to be ordinary household garbage, including electronic waste and used diapers.
There were 103 containers and about 2,500 tonnes of waste originally, but 34 containers have been disposed of locally in the Philippines, despite the objections of local environment groups.
The EcoWaste Coalition in the Philippines and RightOnCanada issued a statement Thursday calling the return of the garbage a “victory for the rule of law, morality and the environment.”
Aileen Lucero, national co-ordinator of the EcoWaste Coalition, said she feels “jubilant” that the six-year battle to get the garbage returned is finally over.
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