The Philippines has sent tonnes of rubbish back to Canada,
after a weeks-long diplomatic spat that saw President Rodrigo Duterte threaten
to "sail to Canada and dump their garbage there".
The Philippines says the rubbish was falsely labelled as
plastic recycling when it was sent to Manila in 2014.
Canada has agreed to cover the full cost of its transfer and
disposal.
Some 69 containers of refuse were sent back in a cargo
vessel that set sail from Subic Bay, north of Manila.
"Baaaaaaaaa bye, as we say it," Philippine
Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teddy Locsin Jr wrote on Twitter on Friday
morning.
The minister, who is known for his rambunctious tweeting
style, posted pictures and video of the ship leaving port.
The roughly 1,500 tonnes of repatriated rubbish will be
shipped to the Canadian city of Vancouver, arriving before the end of June, to
be treated at a waste-to-energy facility there.
"This is a demonstration that we're going to comply
with our international obligations to deal with waste that originates in
Canada," Sean Fraser, Canada's parliamentary secretary to the environment
minister, told the BBC.
He said Canada had moved quickly in recent weeks to deal
with the issue, which had dragged on for a number of years after the
Philippines government made it "clear this is a very serious priority for
them".
A growing number of countries across South East Asia are
calling for Western nations to take back rubbish that has been sent to their
shores, arguing that some of it was imported illegally.
The amount of rubbish exported by developed countries was
revealed after China, which had imported the bulk of it for years, introduced a
ban on "foreign garbage".
As a result, the trash - sometimes falsely declared as
recyclables - was sent to other developing countries which have now begun to
push back.
How did the row escalate?
Officials in the Philippines first raised the waste issue
with Canada in 2014, saying that containers of mislabelled rubbish had been
shipped between 2013 and 2014.
Manila says the containers, which arrived at Manila
International Container Port, were said to contain recyclable plastics but
actually held tonnes of household waste.
In 2016, a court in the Philippines ordered the rubbish to
be shipped back to Canada at the expense of the importer.
That same year, Canada amended its own regulations around
hazardous waste shipments to prevent a repeat of the incident.
Earlier this month, Manila recalled its ambassador to Ottawa
after Canada missed a 15 May deadline to retrieve the rubbish.
Canada then said it would begin preparations to take the
rubbish back.
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