Dense mats of synthetic waste have washed ashore on Balalan Beach in Northern Cyprus, painting a graphic picture of the damaging regional environmental fallout from Turkey’s booming plastic recycling industry, Ozgur Gazete Kibris (@CyprusNewspaper) reported on August 8.

Video footage shared by the local daily shows that current-driven flotsam traced back to processing hubs in the southern Turkish provinces of Adana and Mersin has turned the scenic shoreline into an open-air dump. The incident underscores the growing cross-border liability for Ankara as its ambition to become Europe’s primary scrap-plastic processing centre collides with ecological limits.

Video: The video footage shared by the local newspaper (@CyprusNewspaper).

A similar situation is observed on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, just across from Cyprus. Mustafa Ozturk, a Turkish professor of environmental engineering, shares videos from the Turkish coast on his social media accounts.

“Depending on the recycling plant stage, plastic waste type, contamination levels such as labels, caps and contents, in addition to the technology used, processing losses typically range from approximately 100 to 300-kg per tonne, corresponding to recovery or yield rates generally in the 70% to 90% range,” Ozturk wrote on August 18 in a LinkedIn post.

The 10-30% in question is washed into the sea in addition to proliferating unprocessed plastic packages.

Turkey’s zero waste business

In September 2017, Turkey’s environment ministry launched the so-called Zero Waste project in the country under the patronage of the country’s first lady, Emine Erdogan.

In January 2018, China banned plastic waste imports. Other countries in East Asia, including Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, soon imposed similar restrictions.

Since 2018, Turkey has become Europe’s biggest plastic importer or, in other words, the continent’s biggest dumping ground.

In 2025, European Union plastic waste exports to Turkey reached an all-time annual high of 503,000 tonnes. Additionally, the UK exported 675,000 tonnes of plastic waste in total in the year, its highest volume in eight years, with almost 140,000 tonnes sent to Turkey.

When summed up, the Europeans exported a total of 640,000 tonnes of plastic waste to Turkey last year. The official data provided by the Turkish statistical institute (TUIK, or TurkStat) suggest around 699,000 tonnes of plastic waste imports received during the year.

Chart: Turkey’s plastic waste imports per year / @inanmutlu1.

Chart: EU’s plastic waste exports to Turkey per year / @ozturk_mustafa.