Mohamed Imranullah S. MAOURAI: Tonnes of American garbage rotting in 35 cargo containers at the Tuticorin port for nearly three years cannot be sent back to the U.S. or to any other country without the plastic content being segregated, says its exporter Evergreen Specialities Inc. of New Jersey. In a counter affidavit filed in the Madras High Court Bench , company administrator U.B. Sehgal said he had identified a buyer of waste plastic in Bangladesh. But the Bangladeshi Customs would permit entry of goods only if they contained plastic waste alone. A high-level committee, which inspected the cargo as directed by the court, had found that the municipal waste primarily contained plastic waste, besides bottles, rubber mats and leather bags. He said such a mixture of plastic waste and other articles could not be sent to any country. At present, there was virtually no paper content in the containers as the moisture in the paper had evaporated in the last three years when the cargo was roving from the U.S. to India and then to Dubai and back to India. "The paper has become ash," he said. It would be more prudent to hand over the cargo to a local plastic processing unit than exporting it to other countries. "I have requested Harbour Petrochem Industries operating in the Tuticorin port zone to take the contents of the 35 containers at zero value. The industry is in the business of importing mixed plastic waste and processing it before exporting," Mr. Sehgal said. He claimed that the cargo containing 879.811 tonnes of municipal waste was mistakenly sent to India as part of the 25,000 tonnes of mixed wastepaper imported by ITC Limited (Paper Boards Divi