India’s neighbour country Sri Lanka sent the last of several hundred containers filled with thousands of tonnes of illegally imported waste to Britain on Monday. Officials gave this information on Monday. Several Asian countries have been pushing against the onslaught of garbage from wealthy countries in recent years and have begun to return unwanted shipments.

The waste from the United Kingdom (Britain) reached Sri Lanka between 2017 and 2019 and was listed as ‘used mattresses and rugs’ but in reality, this waste also contained the biowaste of the hospitals. According to customs officials, not only this biowaste but also included the body parts of the dead bodies kept in the mortuary.

Let us tell you, About 3000 tonnes of garbage in 45 containers had not been cooled and some of them started emitting a strong odour. On Monday, 45 containers were loaded onto a ship located at Colombo port, which was the last batch of 263 containers. These 45 containers have about 3,000 tonnes of garbage.

The medical waste was returned in September 2020 itself, custom officer chief Vijeta Ravipriya said, “There may be new attempts to import such dangerous goods, but we will be vigilant and ensure that this does not happen again.” The first 21 containers filled with medical waste were returned to the UK in September 2020.

A local company importing waste from Britain said it was planning to recover springs from used mattresses as well as cotton to resend to manufacturers overseas but the customs department failed to find any credible proof of such “resource recovery”.