The IRS has seized about 20 tons of garbage sent from Spain to Brazil. The waste was in a container at the port of Itajai, approximately 60 miles from Florianopolis.
The load contains dirty sheets, towels, rugs, shirts and uniforms. On some pieces, there is the logo of a Spanish hospital. Others have names of hotels.
The load came from Valencia and was registered with customs of the IRS in late April. The goods were declared as “other woven cotton cloth.”
“We saw that they were not fabrics, but finished products, all clearly already used and discarded in Spain,” says Carlos Mergen, head of the office of IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of Environment) in Itajai. “You could see, only by the condition of the product, that it had to have another destination. It was dirty, torn and smelly,” he says.
It’s a strange business since the recipients were presumably happy to receive waste – it wasn’t just sent on a whim to turn up unexpectedly on their doorstep – and should not be surprised that these fabrics, destined for recycling, had not first been laundered. Dirty sheets are just part of the expected feedstock and the presence of a hospital logo on some fabrics is entirely irrelevant.
This has the hallmarks of last year’s debacle of wastes sent back to the UK and impounded by the brave boys of the Environment Agency who made a feast of the opportunity to stand in front of reporters, telling how they would gather evidence and prosecute with the full weight of the law. Of course, it was all a case of misidentification – and some not inconsiderable incompetence – that soon fizzled out into an embarrassed silence.