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Istanbul, Türkiye

Waste Colonialism & The Victims of our Plastic Addiction 

A ‘circular economy’ is one based on the reuse and regeneration of materials (like plastics) and products (like cars or clothing). Industry representatives say a circular economy can help manage our plastic waste crisis, but environmentalists claim this system is a myth invented by plastic polluters to avoid responsibility for cleaning up contaminated ecosystems. Our current efforts at reuse and regeneration only process a fraction of our plastic waste, and rely overwhelmingly on manual sorting of different types of plastics and e-waste. This painstaking labor is dangerous, unhealthy, poorly paid, and often done by vulnerable populations like refugees and children. As recycling becomes more expensive the world’s mountains of plastic waste and cheap, discarded electronics – consumed mostly in the rich countries of the Global North – are shipped off to poor countries. Here this waste not only poisons their environment but often forms a new zone of exploitation, where those most at-risk of abuse are tasked with cleaning up the world’s mess.

Infographic

Image Credit: Joey Enriquez

View Joey’s website here: https://www.joeyenriquez.com/3rzwg7l1gp9h2taz16u7l1wopbpsek

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Map

Credit: Nat Case

View Nat’s website here: https://www.incasellc.com/cartography-publication-design/

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Interview

Image Gallery

Turkey - May 15,2015 :Recycling plant in Izmit. Electronic waste recycling plant.
Turkey - May 15, 2015 :Recycling plant in Izmit. Electronic waste recycling plant.
IZMIT, TURKEY - DECEMBER 23, 2016: A worker separating used batteries on a conveyor band in a recycling plant.
Cebeci Istanbul Khalid shows the before and after of plastic that has been put through the shredder.
Istanbul, Türkiye Facing deportation, undocumented migrant labourers, mostly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, have gone into hiding in Istanbul's industrial districts, often living inside the toxic recycling factories where they work. Turkiye’s recycling sector is filled with such small-scale operations that exploit undocumented migrants, forced to work in toxic conditions under threat of deportation for little pay, processing what often turns out to be dirty plastic waste imported from wealthy nations. Adnan Khan
Istanbul, Turkiye Unrecyclable German plastic waste can be found half buried in Cebeci, one of Istanbul's many urban industrial districts. Turkiye’s recycling sector imports massive amounts of dirty plastic waste from wealthy nations that is either unprofitable to recycle or, to be profitable, requires using cheap undocumented labour and ignoring environmental regulations. Adnan Khan
Istanbul, Turkiye Afghan labourers at a recycling factory in Cebeci, one of Istanbul’s many urban industrial districts, sort through plastic waste to put through the shredder at the unregulated recycling factory where they work. Turkiye’s recycling sector is filled with such small-scale operations that exploit undocumented migrants, forced to work in toxic conditions under threat of deportation for little pay, processing what often turns out to be dirty plastic waste imported from wealthy nations. Credit: Adnan Khan
Istanbul, Turkiye Afghan labourers at a recycling factory in Cebeci, one of Istanbul’s many urban industrial districts, sort through plastic waste to put through the shredder at the unregulated recycling factory where they work. Turkiye’s recycling sector is filled with such small-scale operations that exploit undocumented migrants, forced to work in toxic conditions under threat of deportation for little pay, processing what often turns out to be dirty plastic waste imported from wealthy nations. Credit: Adnan Khan
Istanbul, Turkiye Afghan labourers at a recycling factory in Cebeci, one of Istanbul’s many urban industrial districts, sort through plastic waste to put through the shredder at the unregulated recycling factory where they work. Turkiye’s recycling sector is filled with such small-scale operations that exploit undocumented migrants, forced to work in toxic conditions under threat of deportation for little pay, processing what often turns out to be dirty plastic waste imported from wealthy nations. Credit: Adnan Khan
Turkey - May 15,2015 :Recycling plant in Izmit. Electronic waste recycling plant.

Political Cartoon

Where does your plastic bottle go after you drop it in the recycling bin? People often shop for items labeled as “recyclable” and make use of recycling services in their local communities. Although this can make us feel good about reducing waste, the truth is most of these items never actually get recycled. Each year in the US, only about 5% of plastic is recycled. Much of this waste is instead shipped to poor countries where it is sorted by children and other workers in dangerous conditions, or illegally dumped by corrupt middlemen, causing pollution in communities and endangering wildlife.
Where does your plastic bottle go after you drop it in the recycling bin? People often shop for items labeled as “recyclable” and make use of recycling services in their local communities. Although this can make us feel good about reducing waste, the truth is most of these items never actually get recycled. Each year in the US, only about 5% of plastic is recycled. Much of this waste is instead shipped to poor countries where it is sorted by children and other workers in dangerous conditions, or illegally dumped by corrupt middlemen, causing pollution in communities and endangering wildlife. Credit: Andrey Stanislavsky

Article

In May 2021, at just 13-years old, Hayat found himself wandering aimlessly on the streets of Istanbul, dazed and a little terrified.

A slight, fine-boned child, he cut a fragile figure amid the hard-edged city. Born into a farming family from the rural Khogyani district of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, Hayat had never experienced a metropolis on the scale of Istanbul. Bombarded by the sights, the sounds, the endless crowds and anarchic traffic, he was overwhelmed.

“It was like I was dreaming,” he told me in early 2023. “On that first day, I walked around for hours and hours, just staring at everything.”

Like millions of refugees, Hayat had escaped war and poverty to seek out a better life for himself and the family he’d left behind in Afghanistan. His story was familiar: His mother and two sisters were now depending on him after his father, a soldier in the Afghan army, had died. Thousands of Afghan refugees in Turkey could recount similarly tragic stories.

Nearly two years later, in the six-square meter concrete storage closet Hayat shared with two other Afghan refugees, Naseem and Khalid, that childlike wonder was gone. The storage closet was a dingy space set in the back of a plastic recycling factory in the Cebeci neighborhood, far out on Istanbul’s northwestern outskirts.

Over the three months I’d been visiting them—every Sunday, when their boss was away—Hayat, Naseem and Khalid had remained mostly stoic. None of the “boys,” as I’d begun to call them, had expected to be in Istanbul for so long. Their goal was Europe. And they certainly never expected to be living in a plastic recycling factory. But their predicament was common in Istanbul. Afghans have become the most vulnerable refugee population in Turkey, demonized by the Turkish media and targeted for arrest and deportation. In 2022 alone, nearly 50,000—mostly young men and boys—had been sent back to Taliban-governed Afghanistan.[1] To escape arrest, many Afghan men had gone underground.

What was a dire situation for them was a boon for the owners of small recycling factories in industrial districts like Cebeci. Plastic recycling has become a big business in Turkey after China banned plastic waste imports in late 2017. Prior to the ban, China was the primary destination for plastic waste from the world’s wealthy nations, taking in as much as 8.8 million tonnes a year.[2]

 

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