‘Nobody cares’: the Turkish farmers bearing the burden of UK’s plastic waste problem

Britain exported 139,000 tonnes of rubbish to Turkey last year, leaving smallholders and poor districts of Adana to cope with the debris, microplastics and toxic smoke UK plastic ‘waste colonialism’ found to be polluting Turkey’s farming heartland Plastic debris clings to the reeds in a waterway metres from where Ayhan*, a farmer in Adana, southern Turkey, is harvesting aubergines. “We get pollution from all sides here,” he says, referring to the plastic recycling zone upstream, as well as a nearby textile plant that he suspects is making the water acidic. “The plastics are all there, by the b