The company, whose sole director is Noormohammed Master, was caught at Felixstowe three times during 2019 attempting to ship containers of plastic waste contaminated with sanitary products, nappies, electrical wiring and circuit boards. The Environment Agency said the company ignored a warning after the first offence in March 2019 and went on to commit two further offences, the last involving nine shipping containers bound for Turkey in December that year. The company was sentenced on 5 May 2026 at Preston Magistrates' Court.

Joanna Larmour, deputy director of the National Environmental Crime Unit, said the company had shown "a complete disregard for the legislation in place to protect the environment and communities." The prosecution follows the EA's new Waste Crime Action Plan, which sets out a zero-tolerance approach to illegal waste activity.

RPS 370 covers fibre rejects (waste code 03 03 10) and de-inking sludges (03 03 05) from paper manufacturing. Operators may store up to 300 tonnes of wet waste or 150 tonnes of dried material and process no more than 7,500 tonnes over any 12-month period. Waste must not be contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The position replaces the previous low-risk waste position LRWP 62 and will be reviewed by 31 March 2029. Operators must notify the Environment Agency before relying on the statement.

Scotland exported 25,000 tonnes of RDF in 2025, down from 100,000, while Wales exported 47,000 tonnes. Northern Ireland has no operational energy-from-waste capacity, compared with 64 fully operational EfW plants elsewhere in the UK and a further 11 in construction or commissioning. Over 85 per cent of NI's waste exports pass through Warrenpoint port, where RDF storage has generated persistent odour complaints and political fallout since 2024.

Indaver, the European waste management company behind the proposed £250 million arc21 residual waste project, said the data proved Northern Ireland was an outlier. Colin O'Hanlon of Indaver said the project required only a Department for Infrastructure ministerial planning decision to progress to the next procurement stage, where arc21 councils would make a democratic decision on whether to proceed.

The statement, coordinated by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation through its Fashion ReModel project, calls for three changes: reduced VAT in the EU and eliminated sales tax in North America on resold products and repair services; lower labour taxes and tax credits for resale and repair jobs; and extended producer responsibility for textiles to fund collection and sorting infrastructure.

A companion Foundation report, The New Bottom Line, estimates that the combined policy changes could lift gross profit margins to up to 55 per cent for resale and around 41 per cent for repair. The global secondhand fashion market is projected to reach $393 billion by 2030, according to ThredUp, growing at twice the pace of the wider industry. The statement does not reference the UK.