On Friday 8th of August 2025 Dutch news outlets echoed about a sentencing on plastic waste smuggling from the Netherlands to various non-EU countries. NL Times, AD, local news outlets, and the Dutch Inspection (ILT) reported the criminal sentencing of 4 people and 3 companies for illicit plastic waste trade, with one of them being also charged with money laundering. They were all part of the same court sentencing in which a man from Uithoorn had been found guilty of illegally exporting 18 containers full of contaminated plastic waste to Thailand, Nigeria and Türkiye during the period of 2018 to 2019. The man, his wife, and several business partners were found guilty of collaborating in this environmental crime. The joint sentence consisted of a few hundred hours of community service and fines worth a total of around 110.000 euro in addition to repaying 141.000, profits authorities determined were obtained through this case of illicit trade.
The investigation was started by the ILT after receiving a report on the man. As the ILT highlighted, this is, once again, an example of what is going on in the shade of the international plastic waste market. This case followed the modus operandi that we have described in our previous article: mislabelled and contaminated plastic waste shipments, lack of licenses by the exporters, and plainly un-authorized shipments conducted without consent of any authorities of the countries involved. Many other cases – such as the Malaysia case where the country is flooded with illicit shipments from the US – are currently catching public attention.
Interestingly, the industry partners we had the chance to talk to for our broader research on plastic waste shipments made contrasting statements. They uniformly claimed they had never heard of plastic waste smuggling taking place, and insisted such a thing does not happen in the Netherlands. One interviewee even claimed that illicit plastic waste trade is a fantasy created by news outlets and the environmental NGO lobby who jointly set up fake scenarios involving Dutch/European plastic waste being mismanaged in Southeast Asia, Türkiye and Africa. On the other hand, other interviewees, namely two activists based in non-European receiving countries of Dutch plastic waste, declared having received personal and serious threats aiming to silence them.
This contradiction highlights the complex nature of illicit plastic waste trade and calls for in-depth research into the opaque plastic waste trade sector.
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