Toxic waste bound for Thailand to return to Europe after environmental uproar

Shipping containers bound for Thailand allegedly filled with tons of hazardous industrial waste from Albania are now slated to return to Europe, after environmental groups sounded the alarm they were being illegally exported to Southeast Asia.

An A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S ship carrying 40 containers of the waste is due to arrive in Singapore tomorrow, and the suspect cargo will then be sent back to Italy, according to the marine cargo tracking website of MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company SA, which will be transporting the shipment back to Europe.

Maersk is working with Singaporean authorities and the shipping line for whom it’s transporting the containers “to ensure that the containers will be repatriated to Albania in the best way possible,” spokeswoman Summer Shi said.

A further 60 containers of suspected waste currently on board the Maersk Candor, which is due in Singapore later this month, will also head back to Europe, Shi said.

Officials have been working to stop the shipment since Basel Action Network, a US-based non-profit that tracks toxic trade, last week informed Thailand that the containers it believes are filled with potentially harmful electric arc furnace dust were heading its way.

MSC and Albanian authorities didn’t respond to requests for comment, while Singaporean authorities said they weren’t able to comment yet. Maersk said none of the containers were declared to contain hazardous waste, otherwise it would have declined to carry them. Bloomberg News couldn’t independently verify what the ships are carrying. The companies exporting and receiving the containers haven’t been identified.