Basel Convention

The mountains of trash from foreign countries seen piling up around homes and temples in Myanmar are renewing calls for Canada and other wealthy countries to deal with their own plastic garbage at home, instead of exporting waste — and the problem — to the developing world.

In Myanmar, north of Yangon in Shwepyithar, nothing is growing faster than garbage. 

In the year since new rules to slow global exports of plastic waste took effect, Canada's shipments rose by more than 13 per cent, and most of it is going to the United States with no knowledge of where it ultimately ends up.

Canada and the U.S. share an $18.8-million scrap plastic trade, sending truckloads of waste across the border every day. But what happens to these shipments after they've crossed international boundaries?

Eggs eaten by some of the world's poorest people are being poisoned by some of the world's richest.

The federal government expects to make some changes this year to keep Canada's garbage from illegally ending up on foreign shores, after needing to bring dozens of shipping containers of rotting garbage back home from at least two Asian countries last year.

Canada will not sign on to an amendment to an international treaty that could bar three dozen countries from shipping any kind of garbage, even recyclables, to the developing world.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he reassured Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte that Ottawa is searching for a way to dispose of thousands of tons of Canadian trash languishing in the port of Manila.