The climate meeting is being held in a country that has become a major destination for these flows since China stopped accepting Western waste. The equivalent of 500 trucks of European plastics arrives there every day. In 2025, Germany exported more than 150,000 tonnes to Turkey, Spain more than 60,000 tonnes, and France more than 600 tonnes.
In Turkey, only the national authorities have the power to tackle waste trafficking head-on.
In several neighborhoods of Adana, mountains of waste now rise. Residents fear pollution as much as the fires, which break out there more and more often.
Shepherd Abdelcebab Dudu despairs of seeing his goats find a little grass amid the waste that escapes from nearby recycling centers.
Will the states present succeed in uniting in the face of an emergency visible across the entire planet? The Turkish case offers a concrete illustration.
The question of plastic therefore concerns the host country of the conference directly: why does a large share of European waste end up on Turkish soil?
In all, 60,000 tonnes of waste went up in smoke. In Adana, the shadow of organized crime hangs over the disaster.