A few years ago, Morocco was getting some bad rap for importing tons of garbage from neighboring countries, like Italy, and not dealing with it in an environmentally sound manner. It’s costly to destroy polluting waste in European countries because of the risks of dioxin emissions, which are harmful to the ecosystem and could be a health hazard.
So, what do they do? They ship the waste to countries outside the continent with fewer regulations and pay them for taking it off their hands. Morocco is one such place, and it has tainted its position as a world-leading country in renewable energy.
News from 2016 quotes a banner from social media reading: “China is the largest importer of oil, Saudi Arabia is the biggest importer of weapons, Morocco, meanwhile, is the largest importer of waste.”
At the time, the country imported an average of 4,500 tons of waste per year from Italy. It is considered “refuse-derived fuel” because it’s being used as an alternative to fossil fuels, producing energy through incineration. Since then (from 2016 to 2019), Morocco has imported about 1.6 million tons of waste for this purpose.
However, the Ministry of Energy, Mines, and Environment announced in August 2020 that it only imports “non-toxic” and “non-hazardous” waste that can be recycled as refuse-derived fuel for the Moroccan industry. Read more…
