I can tell you what happened. The waste was illegaly burned. Anyone who is living in the Yumurtalık region of Adana, Turkey can tell you about the smell of burnt plastic that starts around midnight, every day! The waste is burned, without any filtration. The air is poisoned, the water is poisoned and the ground is poisoned. The saddest part of this is Adana has the most fertile soil all around Turkey. I don’t have any expectation from the Turkish government officials to solve this issue just because they are as corrupt as the waste burned. I hope some degree of awareness can be created in the UK and EU.

Once, when I was parked in Westminster, London, UK. I observed a huge garbage truck turn-up and begin reversing. There were 3 separate heavy steel containments, each clearly designated for a different kind of waste product - paper, plastic, and another. The guys got out and guided the truck to pick each container up in turn and unload the contents into the same receptacle. I was drinking a coffee and said to one of the guys, "People have carefully sorted that stuff, how come you're dumping it into the same place in the truck..." He just roared with laughter. "It's all just a con, mate," he replied, and boarded the truck and drove off...

As a Merchant Mariner our vessel was going from California to Hawaii to Japan then Australia and finally hopscotching around Indonesia. Normally we unload trash every port if possible but on this ship we held onto the trash until Indonesia. The reason was not only bc the Captain/company could save money but bc the Indonesians didn’t inspect it, ask questions, make you separate it or make you pay fees. I befriended the Indonesian trash collector/owner operator of the trash truck and watched as he dumped it in his back yard right next to the beach onto a stream. I asked “why do you dump it onto the stream?” He replied “bc the rain will come, and the stream will turn into a river and wash it out to sea.” His shoeless children rummaged through it first. There was all sorts of discarded chemicals used for engineering and paints otherwise known as hazmat materials…. If that’s not enough, the whole town seems to burn their trash on the side of the road around sundown, helps keep the bugs away….they have no system for their trash, burn it or throw it in the ocean or river.

I've never understood why people think their plastic is whisked away to be turned into rainbows and butterflies. Here in Australia I am certain it all goes to the same place.

In a retirement town in Florida, the people insisted on recycling, as they were accustomed to in the north. So the town abliged and gave recycling bins to the community. From there, it goes right to the same landfill as the trash.

I grew up in the USA with absolutely no plastics! We had glass bottles that we recycled for cash and paper that comes from renewable sources. The manufacturers and politicians they paid off should be jailed for crimes against humanity this must stop now!

This is high quality journalism showcasing the logistics of waste products.

At least twenty years ago the New Scientist magazine did a feature on the con of 'recycling' and encouraged a change in terminology to 'alternative disposal'. Unfortunately, the public likes the concept of recycling as it feels like something everyone can participate in and feel they have 'done their bit' for the environment. Let's face it, it's a far easier sell than persuading people to reduce consumption, which is what is really needed to reduce environmental damage.

To say nothing of the fuel used to ship it all around Europe

Like every other big corporation, Tesco will promote recycling only so long as it wins favor with their customers and increases sales - and profits. It's not that they can't recycle/incinerate all plastics, it's just that they choose not to because it's not profitable. And companies that make and use cheaper "bad plastics" do so because they're allowed to.

Thank you Bloomberg, for delivering something useful and educational, instead of false political narratives and propaganda! Bravo!

The craziest thing about plastic is that nearly all research on the impact of plastic products compared to products made of other materials doesn't account for all the plastic that ends up in the environment, which makes plastic seem like a better option then it truly is. The impact of plastic is far worse than we have all been led to believe.

In Poland we have a problem with illegal burning trash on recycling companies terrain, every week we have some "self-ignition" of trash that's not worth to recycle but it was worth to be insured... few years ago there was a enormous fire on old tire storage, officially tires got self-ignition... on winter... with -20 Celcius degree outside... and company got a cash from insurance company...

I've always wanted to put a tracker on my recyclables! Thanks for doing this, please do a bunch more!

Really interesting, keep this kind of reporting and content coming

There is a company in Australia that has found a way to put ALL types of plastic together into the same machine and using water and pressure it turns all of it into petrol & basically road asphalt. IT IS SCALABLE.

Most recycling reaches a dead end. There is lack of demand for the end products made from it. Incinerating for heat/energy makes sense provided it is done safely.

I go to the trouble of sorting recyclables and they are collected by my county. I always wonder if most of it just ends up in land fill or what really happens to it. The grocery chains are the only place that collects the plastic bags but I often wonder if they are actually recycled or thrown away. It’s always been a guessing game.

This is the answer to pollution - Burn it all, literally. Landfills are such a needless thing, clean burning incinerators have been around for quite a while now, with the potential to generate a lot of electricity at almost no cost.

Why don't we make the companies producing so much packaging take responsibility for its final destination? Make recycling financially easy

Friend of mine worked at a "garbage dump" here in Melbourne. He told me that all waste went to the exact same place. Recycling or not. Both dumped in a pile then shipped off to Indonesia/phillippines go be dumped there. A decade or so ago china actually used to buy it, but not any more. No demand for it so it just gets shipped to further pollute megadumps in the phillippines.

Great reporting!! Here in Ontario, Canada it was stated that only 9% of our recyclables are actually recycled. If the elites are so concerned for the planet then why don't they do something about it at the top???

This is precisely what I assumed was happening to plastic waste.

“Everything we produce in this world has to go somewhere” you’re 200% right about that…

The signal was cut out because the tracking device was inside metal container at ship heading to turkey. Metal cages can block all kinds of signals.

In my opinion it should be illegal to send trash abroad. Take care of your trash in your country, don't sell the problem to the others. Thanks.

Two stories: Back in the late 1980's, the Ohio suburb I lived in mandated that we could no longer put yard waste into regular trash. We had to purchase expensive special bags. Shortly therafter, I happened to see the trash collection truck pick up the bags & trash and throw it all in together. Not long after, I saw a local community affairs show featuring an interview with some city bureaucrat who was questioned about recycling and admitted that indeed all the trash and recyclables wound up in the same place because they didn't have the capability of actually recycling. Then, in about 2019, the hospital I worked in had prominent recycling bins everywhere for metal cans and glass and plastic. At a network wide meeting the Maintenance Director was asked if it was true that all the recyclables were actually put into the same dumpters as regular trash. He said it was because the prices the hospital could get for recylables was too low to bother with. I have never bothered to recycle and never will. It is all b.s. Just like the fear mongering back in the early 1990's about running out of landfill space.

A lot of poor quality plastic ( with labels / other contaminants , sand , dirt etc ... ) can be chipped , melted and extruded to form plastic " lumber " for park benches / fencing / walkways in wet areas .. some plastics do not melt / mix correctly producing a handy " wood grain " finish for no extra effort ... the physical size of the planks overcomes any weaknesses caused by contaminants

I started separating my thin plastic when there was a pilot scheme in Tescos branch in Cirencester for a company based in Swindon. After the pilot we were told it had gone so well it was being expanded to other branches. Next thing is was country wide and other supermarkets were following suit. I started watching this video thinking I was part of a successful recycling arrangement, that you had somehow missed. I checked the Swindon scheme to find the company had gone into liquidation. So sad, but thanks for the education. One thing you did not mention was whether the incineration of the plastic was causing any pollution.

Denmark 🇩🇰 we don’t use single use plastics, no plastic straws or bags, we plan to have no plastic in the stores by 2030 , there’s stores that already do this.

It seems that recycling of these bad plastics is only uneconomical because the negative impacts of their use is not properly accounted for in their price - smells like a text book case of market failure. Perhaps if their cost covered not only the cost of production but the full life cycle cost, the problem would resolve itself as they would be too expensive to use in the first place.

Remember folks, there are 3 R's- Reduce, Re-use and Recycle! Recycling is the last one on the list because its supposed to be the last option!! Reducing your plastic usage is easier than you think. Let me share some resources, from least obscure to most obscure- Lush- for body care products like soap, shampoo and bath bombs Ocean Saver- for cleaning products Iron and Velvet- Cleaning products Smol- for laundry capsules, dishwasher tablets and fabric softener Splosh- washing up liquid, cleaning products and some personal care Anythingbutplastic- a lot of items, including but not limited to toothpaste tablets with fluoride If we all chip in a little, we can make a big difference!!!

Brilliant reporting, the team should be given an award

Twice it was stated that TESCO makes an enormous amount of profit. Actually Tesco operated at median gross profit margin of 5.5% from fiscal years ending February 2017 to 2021. That's among the lowest profit margin in their sector. The question comes down to how much additional cost is a consumer willing to pay to insure that material is actually recycled. I'd submit that most consumers don't want to pay more than is absolutely necessary for their groceries.

This is a very credible and well made video/documentary etc. I really appreciate the subtle nuance they showed by mentioning that PET plastics are the most recyclable plastic. And then separating PET (for this purpose) with the much more volumes hard to impossible to recycle soft plastics. Even though the broad picture is that plastics are really not recycled a lot, that separation of PET and LDPE plastics shows a lot of research. As there is still subtle differences in the properties of types of plastics that can explain why some are economical or not.

Great reporting

reduce, reuse, recycle in that order. The oil industry wants you to think plastic can be recycled so they can sell more. But the only thing that works is reducing our plastic consumption through bans and taxes

Thank you so much for your kind care and efforts. I am a Sustainability Researcher from Turkey and today is the Earth Day. You could not have done anything better for the planet. I hope TESCO stops greenwashing ASAP - sincere greetings from Istanbul 🌼

Long time ago I was working for Veolia in the UK. Just be aware, that if you put any item in your recycling bag that is not recyclable and the pick up guys notice it, the entire bag will go to a landfill. Nobody will care to remove things like fabric or wood from your bag that is only for plastic and metal.

This answers so many questions I, among many others, have had for years - thank you!

That was fascinating. It's something that's been on my mind recently; how can we be sure that things are being properly recycled and not dumped on some poor community that are struggling with the lack of clean air and water because of our selfishness. Great piece of reporting. :)

Recyclables actually being recycled is probably as much of a myth as "organic" actually meaning something different than any other product. But hey, as long as we all FEEL better about our purchase. Great content!

I would love to see this done from start to finish for a plastic product. I.e. tag something in the factory and see where it ends up

I know where it goes. It breaks down and ends up in everyone's bodies, including animals'. Burns really well? I bet those who want to breathe clean air and/or drink clean water would beg to differ. When we talk about ecological issues we have to address the entire processes. If they're still causing harm at some point in the process they shouldn't be considered "green".

We should just burn it for energy as close to the source as possible. We will figure out bio alternatives but I’d much rather burn it then illegally dump it or just put it in a landfill. I’d honestly support burning all trash for energy because at least when we burn it we get the precious metals back.

I hope the BBC are watching this and taking some notes! . . . Excellent piece, but you need to dig even deeper into this topic.

Thats awful! Here in Australia we have a great system where we sent it to Malaysia or Thailand, and they dump it in the ocean.

All big Box stores don't recycle. It costs them money. So it is trashed. Unless it is their own cardboard for product packaging. They get paid for that.

Very interesting. I live in a small town; the city controls trash, recycling, water, sewer, and electricity. They incinerate the trash. I don’t know what they do with the recycling. A few years ago they switched from picking up recycling once per week to every other week. It would be interesting to find out what is happening with the recycling.

Here in the States, we used to only have paper bags at grocery stores, but then the environmentalists protested back in the early ‘80’s that paper bag use were killing all the trees. And then plastic bags started becoming a thing. One area where AI robots can have a significant positive impact, is in the trash/recycling sorting. There was a video covering AI robotic trash recycling where they were able to accurately sort trash 20x faster than a human. With all this plastic, why not use it on products which don’t require plastics of higher standards? Examples: molded action figures, vehicle floor mats, work station floor mats, vehicle mug flaps, trash bins, and etc.

More of this please. I'm disappointed in Tesco, but I'm sure this issue is rampant

This is awesome reporting, great job, breath of fresh air. Subscribed and will be looking forward to more projects like this in the future

Amazing insight on this important issue 💯

The cement industry has always been a large consumer of carbon-rich combustible waste. Furniture, tyres, you name it. The waste actually goes in the tubular roasting kiln along with the cement. Part of the carbon goes in the cement, so does the ash, combustion gases go through the chimney. The cement is not choosy about what material goes in there. It's only logical that they turn to waste plastic today. At the high temperatures in these processes the complex compounds are broken down to their chemical basics. I think even halogens like chlorine and fluorine, which are present in some plastics, can be partly neutralized by the basic environment of the cement. Not really sure about that, though.

It is pretty sad that a company who promises their bags would be recycled, instead often times has them incinerated, turned into garbage bags(which I guess is some form of recycling, but we all know where they end up), or is simply dumped and discarded.

I thought that some states in the U.S. were considering legislation to return all recyclables to the companies that used them for their products. I do my best to elminate plastic in my home. No plastic bottles at all! Purchase liquids that are in coated paper or aluminum cans. No plastic wrap. I call companies that sell frozen TV dinners in plastic containers and ask them to use cardboard containers. No plastic straws only stainless steel straws. No plastic silverware. Never thought about bread bags. I do the best I can.

Real journalism.

Canada is not best known for being a leader in recycling plastics but one company in Canada has made half their product packaging recyclable since the 1960s. The company is a chip company called Old Dutch and they package half their chips in clear plastic bags and then packaged in light weight cardboard boxes. This keeps the chips from getting crushed in transit as well as shielding the chips from light that may trigger a perishing reaction in the chips. Sadly, they do not do this for all of their chips and I wish other snack companies would do this. Clear bags for inner packaging and card stock for the outside. Both materials on their own are completely recyclable and resalable on the open market.

My city sent a letter out early last year that the landfill charged about $11 per ton and the recycling place was up to $85 per ton so they were taking everything to the landfill, and the same truck still picks up both the garbage bin and recycling bin

Extremely interesting piece! Love investigative journalism, actual information gathering and reporting.

Great investigative reporting, thanks for doing this!

Nicely done, keep 'em coming. I have noticed recently that Bloomberg are becoming prominent in quality reporting. Quicktakes and NEF in particular. Bravo!

Where I live we've been burning it in the power plant incinerator as fuel along with most of our garbage since 1975. The percentage of plastic has increased enough that the equipment has been redesigned for the higher energy value of the plastics.

Fantastic investigative journalism, keep up the great work!

In India they make sandals from soda bottles, they are hard wearing, and are not cheap to buy... As a camper I have long known the use of polythene bottles for fire lighters, and that plastic burns cleaner than does wood. I have heard of many layers of washed polythene carrier bags being ovened to fuse the layers together, then used to make the soles of trainers. I have heard of mixed plastics being fused together and moulded in a hydraulic press to make long life fence posts (in fact they are so expensive at £33 each that people steal them!). China in 2017 refused to import waste plastic after a documentary came out called"Plastic China" where the dirty unwashed waste plastic stank... Sooo - - I wash and sort together all my waste plastic, so at least whatever comes from my house is inoffensive and easy to put to (re)use. The local authority here in Wales -the staff are supercilious. They order to wash waste plastic but never enforce, and they appear to be indifferent unless individual staff can make money out of waste. A lot of waste plastic moves to an industrial estate in the Midlands where it is burned to make electricity, and reportedly people living nearby have no idea that waste is being burned there - it is so clean. Then burning waste plastic can replace coal (in tourist steam engines ?)... Then in times of fuel shortage, we can make our own diesel by heating waste plastic in closed containers, which melts and then "cracks" it into shorter molecules, thus undoing polymerisation and turning the plastic into volatile liquids again. So what we so willingly bin, we could recycle ourselves as a useful source of energy and engineering materials.

And all this time I thought they were using the plastic to build an island in the pacific....

Brilliant investigative reporting.....unreal how this packaging travels the world and the government is happy to get rid of it from the UK .....am I surprised ....NO.

Kind of wild that the most "economic" way to deal with it involved shipping it a thousand miles away until it was somewhere without oversight. Government needs to regulate this waste management. The cost of plastic is not factored into the purchase price.

Best recycling practices, business ideas with respect to it should be shared across the world. Every country should have be member in it to safeguard the earth.

I'm glad this report was done.

Thanks for the fantastic journalism

Amazing. Real journalism! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Clever experiment, very interesting results.

12:27 "The reason Tesco is exporting plastic is because it's the most cost-efficient solution to their problem." Why is this the most cost-efficient solution? Could it be that "progressive" nations implement laws that make it impossibly expensive to dispose of this material? It's going to be burned or buried, but the politicians of 1st world nations have decided it won't be burned or buried "in my backyard". This stuff could be burned reasonably cleanly in developed countries if not for their hypocritical environmental laws that all but encourage companies to export our trash to places where it'll be burned in an open pit. We all breathe the same air; we should do this at home under cleaner, more controlled circumstances.

This is great journalism and very informative. Thank you!

THANK YOU ! For exposing this. Numerous times, I've tried to look into what actually happens to the so-called recycling waste. There is not very much to be found online. Tending to hit a brick wall with how they actually process the stuff. Companies need to be charged/fined for using plastic. Then maybe they may sit up and have to do something environmental. When it actually costs them!

We should just face the fact that plastic recycling doesn't work at scale and turn to burning waste for energy more broadly, if we don't burn the waste we're gonna burn oil/gas/coal anyway

During the "2 weeks to flatten the curve" that turned into closer to a year, I saw headlines about China refusing to accept trash from the US on cargo ships. Apparently it was common practice to ship "recycling" to China, where it mostly just went to landfills. I also watched a Canadian video about how a lot of their garbage ended up in Malaysia.

Great reporting. You are correct about Tesco only doing what is cost efficient. If they wanted to change things for the better they would 1. Start their own sorting facility (building, machines, transportation, and employees) 2. start their own recycle processing facility (building, machines, transportation, and employees) 3. expand their drop off waste program (not just at Tesco store) 4. convince manufacturers to only use package materials Tesco approved (or product will not be in stores) 5. Use influence to change government policies (Turkey in not the only corrupt money hungry government in the world) but unfortunately this will never happen because of money

Authentic journalism 👏 👌

What a thought-provoking discussion about the environment! 👏💖

I'm left wondering what brand of tracker you used. It seems incredibly robust!

I used to be a janitor for an office building. The recycled containers got emptied into the same dumpster as the trash

Great work! Spread these informations!

I would rather this garbage was burned in UK power stations and produce electricity than having to ship it around the world to Turkey where it is burned illegally without any filtration and no energy is recovered...

Doskonała robota, gratulacje!

Well done, this was very informative. Thanks

excellent video., shows the lengths that companies (can) go to regarding their waste plastic products

Thanks for the excellent documentary.

I hate the thought of plastic not being recycled safely and legally. We are a wasteful world.

great info..loved it

Great Job, Bloomberg! Please show more.

Wall-E wasn't a joke, hes from another planet that was able to have human control in a robot and wanted to speak but couldn't communicate

I always thought it should be a requirement that any plastic recycling facility must either sort and isolate useful plastics for proper recycling, or shred everything else down to a standard size flake of maybe 5mm or smaller. From there the mixed plastic flakes can be sold or disposed of. Here's why: If the flakes are buried, they will decompose faster, if they are dumped in the ocean, they will break down faster, and if burned, they will burn more efficiently. But also - having massive quantities of mixed plastic flakes of a standard size becomes much more manageable for automated sorting and processing. It creates a market for standardized advanced shorting machine that are designed to process the flakes, using optical, chemical, or other techniques to further sort and extract useful plastics. The flakes are cheaper and easier to transport and handle by startups that can use them for any number of things, like turning them back into oil, or using them as filler for roadways or other products. Mountains of misc plastic items of every size and shape is a pain to deal with. Barrels or boxes of plastic flakes are much easier to transport and distribute as a commodity.

Excellent methodology and reporting! Very revealing...

Great video thank you. Hopefully these bigger chains can enforce standardised packaging materials.

Do you recycle at home?

The American reaction to existing inflation tells you all you need to know about any solution. There is no solution

It should be made illegal to export waste. The people generating the waste should be the ones to deal with it. If you put it in a box and ship it to a far away land, they will just continue their merry waste-generating way. Thinking their lifestyle has no negative impact to the environment.

The paradox of this is Zielona Góra means Green Hill... Green... Hill... :)