The Colour Green
The regulatory pathway that requires this form — and nothing more — is called the Green List.1
I want to spend a moment on that name. In a regulatory system where public trust depends on the assumption that "regulated" means "verified," someone named the pathway carrying the least verification "Green." The word does environmental work that the regulation explicitly does not do. Every time a government document refers to "Green List waste exports," the colour implies ecological soundness. The regulation implies paperwork.
What Green List actually means, in regulatory terms: minimum documentation required.3 An Annex VII form travels with the waste. The exporter and consignee have a contract. No application to the Environment Agency. No fee. No prior notification to the destination country's competent authority. No financial guarantee.3
Compare this with the other pathway — the notification and consent regime, which applies primarily to hazardous and restricted waste. That route requires a formal application to the EA via the International Waste Shipments online system. Application fees ranging from GBP 3,679 to more than GBP 13,637, depending on shipment volume, plus a separate financial guarantee.3 Third-party liability insurance. Prior written consent from every competent authority involved. Processing timescales of several months.3
The consent regime asks for consent. The Green List asks for a form.
And here is the inversion that the system was built on: the pathway requiring the most documentation — consent, guarantees, fees, prior approval — applies to the waste stream with the smallest volume. The pathway requiring the least documentation applies to the waste stream with the largest volume.13 The UK exported 598 million kilograms of plastic waste in 2024, according to HMRC customs data compiled by the Basel Action Network and the Environmental Investigation Agency.911 The overwhelming majority of this material is classified as non-hazardous waste for recovery — Green List. It carries an Annex VII form and nothing else.
Someone named the pathway with the least oversight "Green." The colour is carrying weight the regulation put down. That takes drafting skill.
The Clause
I went looking for the clause that makes the system work — the part of the law that says someone checks the other end.
Article 18 of EU Regulation 1013/2006, as retained in UK law, is titled "Waste to be accompanied by certain information."1 It is the legal provision that governs every Green List waste export. If there is a requirement — anywhere in UK law — for someone to verify that exported waste is actually recycled at its destination, it should be here. This is the clause that tells exporters what they must do.
I read it. The full text.
Article 18(1)(a) states the purpose: "In order to assist the tracking of shipments of such waste, the person under the jurisdiction of the country of dispatch who arranges the shipment shall ensure that the waste is accompanied by the document contained in Annex VII."1
Tracking. The stated purpose of the entire regime is to assist the tracking of shipments. Not to verify recycling. Not to confirm environmental outcomes. To track movement.
Article 18(1)(b) specifies when the Annex VII form is signed: by the person arranging the shipment before it departs, and by "the recovery facility or the laboratory and the consignee when the waste in question is received."1
Received. The regulation uses that word at the point where "recycled" should be. Not processed. Not recovered. Received.
Article 18(2) requires a contract between the arranger and consignee that includes an obligation: if the shipment or its recovery "cannot be completed as intended," the person arranging the shipment must take the waste back or ensure its recovery in an alternative way.1
Three obligations. That is the complete list of what Article 18 requires of a Green List waste export:
One. Ensure the waste is accompanied by the Annex VII information document.
Two. Sign the document before shipment; have the recovery facility sign upon receipt.
Three. Have a contract with the consignee providing for take-back if recovery cannot be completed.
The requirements list ends. I kept reading.
Article 18(3) is a permissive clause: the UK competent authority "may in accordance with national legislation require information as referred to in paragraph 1 on shipments covered by this Article."1 The EA may ask for data. It is not a mandatory outcome-verification mechanism. The regulation permits the regulator to request information. It does not require verified outcomes from anyone.
Article 18(4) says the information "shall be treated as confidential where this is required by national legislation."1
That is the end of Article 18.
I read the surrounding sections, thinking I had missed a cross-reference — a clause in Article 19 or 20 that picks up where 18 leaves off and says: here is where someone confirms recycling actually occurred. I hadn't missed anything.
What Article 18 does not contain — at any point in its text:
Any requirement for prior notification to the destination country's competent authority. Any requirement for consent. Any financial guarantee. Any post-arrival confirmation that the recovery operation was carried out. Any post-recovery confirmation that recycling was completed. Any verification, by anyone, at any stage, of environmental outcome at destination.1
The regulation stops looking at the border. It was written to stop looking there.
I am not arguing that someone sat in a room and plotted this. The Green List regime was inherited from the Basel Convention and the EU Waste Shipment Regulation, designed at a time when the primary concern was preventing hazardous waste dumping in developing countries.1 The architecture is international. But "designed" does not require a conspiracy. A bridge can be designed in a way that fails under load without the engineer intending failure. The design still explains the collapse. The structure of Article 18 — three obligations, all concerning documentation, none concerning outcomes — is an architectural fact. The silence where "verified recycling at destination" should appear is not an oversight I discovered. It is the architecture I read.
The Shipment
I went looking for what happens after the trail goes cold.
In October 2018, investigators from Greenpeace's Unearthed team found UK household plastic waste at illegal dump sites in Malaysia.6 Not abstract waste. Specific waste. Recycling bags bearing logos from London councils — Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, Tower Hamlets — and Essex authorities, according to the Greenpeace investigation.6 Fairy dishwasher tablets. Yeo Valley yoghurt pots. Tesco Finest crisp packets. McCain's oven chip wrappers. Heinz baked beans tins. Flora lids. A magazine wrapper addressed to a resident in Northallerton.6
At one site in Ipoh, the Greenpeace investigators reported plastic piles reaching twenty feet high, with milk bottles and shreds of bags floating in stagnant pools of water.6 Their expert estimated a recovery rate for this material of 30 to 40 per cent.6
These materials received Packaging Export Recovery Notes — PERNs — at GBP 60 per tonne, certifying them as recycled for UK compliance purposes, according to the Greenpeace report.6
The regulatory classification of these shipments: UK household mixed plastic packaging for recycling. Non-hazardous waste for recovery. Under the Transfrontier Shipment Regulations, this material travels under Green List controls — an Annex VII information document, no competent authority consent, no financial guarantee.13
Three years later, Greenpeace investigated again — this time in Turkey. At ten sites in Adana province, investigators found UK plastic bags and packaging being dumped and burned, according to the Greenpeace investigation.7 Branding from Lidl, Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury's, Tesco, Spar, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo was identified at the sites.7 The Environmental Investigation Agency documented the mechanism: "Huge quantities of imported plastic waste — much of it impossible to recycle — are allowed to accumulate in facilities across Adana," the EIA reported. "When recycling becomes unprofitable, these plastics are dumped, abandoned or deliberately burnt to reduce costs."10
Turkey is an OECD member country. Exports from the UK to OECD countries for recovery travel under Article 18.1 The exporter completes the Annex VII form. The recovery facility signs Block 14. From the UK regulatory system's perspective, the shipment is compliant. The trail ends at receipt.
I wanted to find a single document chain showing one shipment's full journey: the completed Annex VII form, the customs clearance, the PERN issued, and the same material photographed at a dump site. The three documents that would prove the system succeeded AND the waste was dumped.
I could not assemble that chain. Not because the evidence doesn't exist in fragments — the Greenpeace photographs, the PERN payments, the Green List classification are each documented. But the system does not generate the documentation that would make the chain traceable. There is no return form. There is no post-arrival verification document. The Annex VII has no "was it recycled?" field. The trail ends at Block 14, and the system does not look beyond it.
That is not an investigation failure. That is the architecture working exactly as written.
The Ratio
The Environment Agency catches criminals. This is not in dispute.
In 2024, the EA prevented 79,713 tonnes of waste from illegal export, according to its Chief Regulator's Report.5 It brought 34 prosecutions, resulting in approximately GBP 320,000 in total fines and 37 custodial sentences — prison time, not just paperwork penalties.5 It arrested 17 individuals for fraud in the Packaging Export Recovery Note system and forfeited GBP 665,000 in criminal assets through Account Freezing Orders, according to Environment Agency enforcement data.5 Its dedicated port officers stopped between 200 and 450 containers at UK ports during the year.18
These are real numbers representing real enforcement. I am not arguing that the EA is negligent.
I am arguing about ratios.
The UK exported an estimated 10 million tonnes of waste in 2024.5 At roughly 22 tonnes per standard shipping container, that is in the region of 450,000 containers leaving UK ports each year. The EA stopped 200 to 450 of them.
For a cleaner number: in 2020, the EA prevented the illegal export of 46 shipping containers of plastic waste to Turkey.5 The UK exported approximately 210,000 tonnes of plastic to Turkey that year, according to Greenpeace data — roughly 9,500 containers at standard capacity.7
The EA caught 46 out of approximately 9,500. One in 207.
The penalties tell a similar story. The Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations 2007, Regulation 59, sets the fixed penalty for a waste export offence at GBP 300.4 Three hundred pounds. That figure has not been updated since 2007.4 The average fine across the EA's 34 criminal prosecutions in 2024 was approximately GBP 9,412 — higher than the fixed penalty, but set against an industry that IBISWorld estimates at approximately GBP 12.6 billion in annual revenue for non-hazardous waste collection alone.513
GBP 320,000 in total fines against approximately GBP 12.6 billion in industry revenue. The fines represent 0.003 per cent of the industry they regulate.
Someone set the fixed penalty for a waste export offence at GBP 300 for an industry worth billions. I note the precision. It is not a deterrent. It is a tariff. The regulation prices non-compliance the way a car park prices overstaying: inconvenient enough to notice, never enough to change behaviour.
The penalty structure does not deter. It prices.
The Architecture
Pull back. Four layers.
Layer one: the Green List inversion. The pathway carrying the highest volume of waste exports requires the lowest level of documentation — no consent, no guarantee, no fee. Just an Annex VII form.13
Layer two: the border terminus. Compliance verification stops at the point of UK export. Block 14 of the Annex VII confirms receipt at the destination facility. It does not confirm recycling.2
Layer three: the penalty signal. Regulation 59 sets the fixed penalty at GBP 300.4 Criminal prosecution averages GBP 9,412 per case.5 The enforcement numbers are genuine. Their scale relative to the industry they regulate tells the system what compliance is worth.
Layer four: the statistical fiction. The National Audit Office found in 2018 that UK packaging recycling figures were "not sufficiently robust" and that the government relied on exports "without adequate checks" to ensure the material was actually being recycled.12 That was eight years ago. The architecture has not materially changed. In 2023, the Environmental Investigation Agency identified a 43,575-tonne discrepancy between HMRC customs data and Packaging Export Recovery Note claims — tonnes that were certified as recycled but for which no customs export record exists.8
These are not four separate failures. They are one architecture. One design principle applied at every layer: the more waste moves through the system, the less the system asks about what happens to it.
I've found this pattern before. In compostable packaging, the standard certified the material for facilities that didn't exist. In ghost tonnes, certificates floated free of waste. In producer responsibility, the industry wrote a definition that covered 10 per cent of the cost. Now I'm finding it at the border. Same principle. Bigger scale. The system's scrutiny is inversely proportional to the volume it handles.
The Counter-Position
The strongest defence of the Green List regime runs like this: non-hazardous waste poses lower environmental risk than hazardous waste, and lighter regulatory controls are therefore proportionate. This is not an "inversion" — it is standard risk-based regulation, practised across every OECD jurisdiction. The Basel Convention established the framework. The EU authored the regulation. The UK transposed it faithfully. Every EU member state operates the same architecture. The EA enforces vigorously within its statutory powers — 37 custodial sentences, tens of thousands of tonnes prevented from illegal export, criminal assets seized.
This is not an unreasonable position. Risk-proportionate regulation is a legitimate principle.
But the defence answers the wrong question. The question is not whether lighter documentation should accompany lower-risk materials during transit. The answer to that may well be yes. The question is whether any pathway — regardless of risk classification — should allow the UK to count material as "recycled" without verifying that recycling occurred at destination.
"Non-hazardous" describes what the material is. It does not describe what happens to it. A non-hazardous plastic bale that is burned in an unregulated facility in Adana province is still an environmental outcome.710 The classification system addresses material properties. It does not address material destiny. The tiering explains why the paperwork is lighter. It does not explain why the paperwork stops at the border.
One further fact: the UK retained this architecture by choice after Brexit, when it had full sovereignty to redesign the system. The EU, which authored the original regulation, enacted a comprehensive reform in 2024 — EU Regulation 2024/1157 — that will ban plastic waste exports to non-OECD countries from November 2026.16 The UK pledged an equivalent ban in 2019. As of February 2026, it has not set an implementation date.16 The UK is now operating a waste export system whose own designers have legislated their departure.
The Trail
The trail goes cold at the border. It was designed to go cold there.
The Annex VII form tracks waste from the UK to a destination facility. It does not track what happens after arrival. Article 18 requires documentation of movement, not verification of outcome. The Green List pathway — carrying the majority of UK waste exports — requires no consent, no guarantee, no fee, and no post-arrival confirmation of recycling.13 The penalty for offences within this system starts at GBP 300 and averages GBP 9,412 — against an industry worth approximately GBP 12.6 billion.4513
The system was not broken by criminals. It was built by legislators. Everyone followed the rules. The rules are the architecture.
But something is changing. From July 2026, the Environment Agency will require all Article 18 Green List exports to be reported for the first time — ending a data blackout that has persisted since the regulations came into force in 2007.17 Operators will need to register with the EA. A charging regime will be introduced. Digital waste tracking is in development.17 The EA itself calls this an "interim plan," which tells you what it thinks of the current arrangement.17
These reforms are real. They matter. They improve data collection. They do not — yet — add outcome verification at destination. After July 2026, the Annex VII form will still not have a field asking whether recycling occurred. The system will know more about where waste goes. It will not yet know what happens when it gets there.
The UK exported 598 million kilograms of plastic waste in 2024 — an increase of 30 million kilograms on the previous year, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency.9 Twenty-one domestic recycling facilities have closed in the past two years, with approximately 260,000 tonnes of annual capacity lost since 2022, according to Green Alliance and researchers at the University of Manchester.1415 As domestic capacity contracts, the Green List export pathway becomes not just available but structurally necessary. The system that cannot verify recycling at destination is the same system the country increasingly depends on.
A gap you can name is a gap you can close. Now you know where the trail goes cold — and that it was designed to go cold there.
That's not nothing.