• The European Union recently announced that it is to completely ban the exports of unsorted plastic to poor countries. 
• The new rules of the European Union will amend the 2006 Waste Shipment Regulation. 
• The new rules are to ban the exports to less industrialised nations outside OECD.
• The new rules are a part of the Green Deal of European Union to establish a circular economy. It allows plastic waste, hazardous and hard to recycle waste to be exported to OECD countries. However, the new rules will allow the export of plastic waste only to countries that intends to recycle.
• Also, the new rules allow the European Union countries to export clean, non-hazardous waste to any non-OECD countries. These new rules have been imposed after China banned plastic import in 2018. The new rules have been imposed based on 1989 Basel Convention.

Basel Convention 1989 :

• The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was signed in 1989. The convention was signed to reduce the movement of hazardous waste between the nations. As of October 2018, 186 states have signed the convention including European Union.

European Union :

• The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe.
  Capital - Brussels.