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by
Christina Brause
Every three and a half days, a waste management plant catches fire somewhere in Spain. These were once isolated incidents. According to authorities, these fires have doubled in recent years, with over 100 facilities burning annually since 2021.
These fires are symptoms of a crisis sparked by a single policy change. When China banned plastic waste imports in 2018, it rerouted global waste flows. Before the ban, Spain alone exported around 115 911 tonnes to the country. By 2024, Spain’s exports to China fell to zero. Yet plastic consumption – in Spain as well as in the rest of the EU – continued rising. Spain’s recycling infrastructure buckled under the redirected waste. The country has struggled for years with hundreds of illegal landfills, prompting the European Commission to refer Spain to the EU Court of Justice over its failure to enforce basic waste rules.
The Art of Mislabeling
Yet illegal dumping is only half the story. Spanish companies also turned eastward, illegally shipping waste to new destinations in Southeast Asia. In the spring of 2019, Malaysian authorities intercepted 24 containers of plastic waste which, according to the government, originated from Spain. The public rarely learns which companies are behind such shipments; investigations are either ongoing or the files remain closed. In the case of these 24 containers, Greenpeace Spain took advantage of the fact that several of the illegally exported units were returned to Spain. The organization analyzed customs data from the tax authorities, which revealed that the containers were bound for the province of Valencia.
The NGO subsequently traced a shipment that had arrived at Port Klang, Malaysia, on April 15, 2019. According to Greenpeace, the sender was a Canadian company which listed an address in Valencia. Located at this same address, and on the very same plot of land, as Iber Resinas S.L., a licensed recycling facility. Greenpeace further stated that a source in Malaysia confirmed Iber Resinas S.L. was being investigated in connection with the containers and was named as the owner of the goods in an official document.
Weak controls and convoluted regulations make it easy to operate through corporate networks and shared business addresses without drawing immediate attention. Furthermore, the cargo was allegedly declared not as waste, but as cleaned plastic pellets for industrial use – a classification that could be used to bypass the stricter regulations governing waste exports.
Fifty-two Illegal Shipping Routes
In a detailed report, Interpol has identified that organized criminal groups infiltrate legitimate businesses to mask illegal operations, “with regular involvement of financial crimes and various frauds, especially documents forgery”. Based on open sources and criminal intelligence from 40 countries, Interpol identified illegal shipments on 52 of 257 routes analyzed. Criminals continuously re-route illegal waste shipments, including using transit countries to disguise the origin of the waste.
It is not only the origin of the waste that is sometimes concealed, but also the recipients. When illegal waste shipments are discovered, containers frequently become stranded at ports for months or even years, creating bottlenecks and disrupting normal operations. In Malaysia’s Port of Penang alone, 265 containers of plastic waste were abandoned in May 2019. Resulting diplomatic tensions over repatriation requests have forced states to tighten container controls and sanctions. France led this crackdown in November 2019 by fining a trading company a record 192,000 Euros for illegally shipping plastic waste to Malaysia.
Behind these cases are international networks that rely on a web of shell companies, shared addresses and mislabelled shipments – often hiding in plain sight. Tracking these operations requires following paper trails across multiple jurisdictions. The third part of the series examines how companies attempt to bypass EU sanctions and how they can still be tracked down.
This is part two of our eco crimes series. Part one, “How to Hide a Mercury Business”, shows how a German firm hid mercury smuggling through opaque corporate structures.
