A World Wildlife report this month on plastic pollution in the Mediterranean found the highest amount of plastic debris had accumulated in Turkey's Cilicia on the southeastern coast. The report also ranked Turkey as the second biggest contributor to mismanaged waste in the region after Egypt, with Turkey responsible for 18.9% of the waste in the Mediterranean. The report raises a crucial red flag for the near future. Since the Chinese government started enforcing strict regulations on its plastic imports in 2018, Turkey has become one of the world’s top 10 waste importers.

In the last couple of years, Turkish imports of plastic waste have made headlines in papers with alarming titles such as “New plastic waste bin of the world: Turkey” or “Turkey: Europe’s new trash can.” At the beginning of 2016, Turkey imported 4,000 tons of plastic waste monthly, while around the same time period in 2018 the number had reached 33,000 tons.

Why have Turkey’s plastic waste imports grown so exponentially?

Yavuz Eroglu, the president of the Turkish Plastics Industry Foundation, told Al-Monitor that Turkey ranks second in Europe as plastic producer after Germany and sixth in the world. Eroglu said, “We produce 10 million tons of plastics annually. 250,000 people are employed and 14,000 companies are active in the sector.” Eroglu and other experts say China’s new regulations limiting plastic waste imports are the main cause of the sharp rise in waste transported to Turkey and several other developing countries.