[By Kathy Griffin]

[Text] Hong Kong is becoming a dumping ground for the United States' rubbish, according to the environmental group, Greenpeace.

It said the U.S. exported more than half of its plastic waste to Hong Kong for recycling. Greenpeace said the waste was often too low-grade for U.S. recyclers or could not be recycled at all, meaning the host country had to dispose of it.

The recycling processes could also be hazardous to workers and the environment, and traders were coming to Asia because of community opposition to recycling plants in the U.S., it said.

Last December alone there were 150 shipments of U.S. plastic waste to the territory which were declared to the U.S. Customs Department, totalling, 3,425 tonnes and accounting for 52 percent of all such exports.

The Census and Statistics Department said that last year Hong Kong imported 425,000 tonnes of plastic waste worth more than $1.1 billion, and about half of it came from the U.S.

The trade only recently came to light after the U.S.-based branch of Greenpeace began investigating it in the wake of several high-profile toxic waste shipments from the U.S. and Europe to developing countries.

Hong Kong's Environmental Protection Department (EPD) said it only recently became aware of the problem after reviewing trade statistics.

Mr Dick Rootham of the EPD's solid waste group said the department was looking into the trade, but hoped to introduce controls later this year on all waste imports into Hong Kong.

"Although we can control trade in waste, one of the exceptions is when the material is re-used. (Waste for) recycling is one thing we'll be including in amendments to the Waste Disposal Ordinance," he said, although he could not say what those controls would be.

About half of the imported plastic waste, which includes polyethylene, polystyrene, polyvinylchloride and other plastic products, stays in Hong Kong and the rest is re-exported almost entirely to China.

Hong Kong also exports plastic waste generated here--about 207,000 tonnes last year--mostly to China.

Ms Ann Leonard is investigating the trade on behalf of Greenpeace's international waste trade project, and returned to Washington last week after visiting recycling factories in Hong Kong, China, the Philippines and Indonesia.

"We're concerned about it because we don't want to add to disposal problems in other countries and also because recycling plastic is encouraging plastic production," she said.

"It's duping the public because you can't bury plastic and you can't burn it, and just because it's recycled doesn't mean it's green or safe. The best thing to do is not to use so much plastic."

The factories used the scrap to make such things as toys, shoe soles and rubber thongs, but in the process workers and the environment were endangered.

For instance, in an Indonesian factory Ms Leonard saw children as young as six sorting through bags containing the residue of what appeared to be pesticides, and ending up covered in it. Pesticides can be toxic.

The recycling process also emitted strong fumes and created contaminated waste water, and hot melted plastic splashed out of factory vats posing a danger to workers, she said.

The trade also created waste disposal problems for host countries. An Indonesian factory manager told her that up to 40 percent of the imported plastic was not suitable for recycling.

The new directors of Friends of the Earth, Mr Peter Illig, said recycling was an industrial process and inevitably created emissions, and this had to be balanced against the benefit of re-using waste.

"China probably imports it because it creates jobs and money. That's definitely one of the big motivating factors, but you need to make sure there's a balance between economic gain and environmental harm," he said.

Ms Leonard said some Hong Kong operators recycled the plastic in the territory but many were believed to have re-located factories across the border to such places as Shenzhen, Huizhou, and Nam Kong. They mostly used the territory to store the waste en route to China.

She was unable to pinpoint whether the imported plastic was industrial or consumer waste, but samples from the region's factories would be analysed in the U.S.

Ms Leonard said 88 countries had banned waste imports, including many in Africa and Latin America but none in Asia. The Philippines claims to ban them, but U.S. shippers report sending plastic waste there.