Plastic waste piled outside an illegal recycling factory in Jenjarom, Kuala Langat, Malaysia. (Reuters)
Over the last few weeks, the leaders of several Southeast Asian nations have taken unusually strong measures to protect the environment of their countries. Almost in unison, leaders and senior government officials have threatened and then carried out the threat of returning illegal exports of garbage, most of it very hazardous to humans and the environment. The exporting countries in all of these cases have been developed nations from around the world, including the US, the UK, Spain and Canada.
This is perhaps the first time ever that developing countries have returned garbage from the first world, which has been using not just Southeast Asia, but also Africa, South Asia and China, as extensions to its landfills, dumping waste that the rich do not want in their backyard.
For decades, “trade” in waste has been a very profitable business for a few, but one for which millions of poor people have paid a very heavy price in terms of long-term health effects or even death. Each year, hundreds of millions of tons of waste is traded and most of it ends up in landfills or the water systems of developing nations. This includes a huge variety of goods, from scrap metal and plastics to ships, automobiles, tires, batteries and electronic waste.
Most of these goods, or at least some of their components, are hazardous and the recipient countries or companies that have to deal with the waste are neither technologically nor financially equipped to be able to do it in a way that does not harm the people dealing with the waste or the ecology of the area.
Consider the ship breaking business. Every year, more than 200 ships, most of them owned by European or American shipping giants, are retired and dismantled. The dismantling happens almost entirely in South Asia, with India, Bangladesh and Pakistan accounting for an overwhelming proportion. The ships are broken down by thousands of workers, most of them migrants who have little knowledge and no choice but to deal with the hazardous parts of the ships, including batteries and some heavy metals. As most of the unrecyclable parts are simply dumped, often illegally, waste elements like lead, oils or other chemicals seep into the ground and the water systems, even poisoning people living relatively far away from the shipyards.
Meanwhile, with the boom in smartphones, computers and other electronic devices, trade in e-waste, almost all of it hazardous, has also boomed. According to the UN, last year nearly 50 million tons of e-waste was produced globally. Of this, the US alone accounted for nearly 8 million tons and the EU was not too far behind, though China and increasingly India are also generating much more e-waste than before. However, for now, as with ship breaking, almost all of the e-waste is shipped to developing nations in Africa and Asia, where businesses try to extract anything of value, often at huge health cost for the workers.
Alongside electronic items, another omnipresent product in our lives today is plastic. This is also a huge challenge for the globe, as the consumption and production of plastics has been rising at an alarming rate, while there are hardly any solutions for dealing with plastic waste. Despite all the hype about recycling, less than 9 percent of the more than 350 million tons of plastics produced last year was recycled. No prizes for guessing where the remainder was dumped.
Plastic recycling is a very expensive and hazardous process, meaning its viability will remain extremely low unless new ways of making plastics, such as bioplastics, which can be disposed of and recycled safely, are developed. Most of these efforts are still confined to the laboratory. In the interim, plastics continue to end up in landfills, water systems around the developing world, and oceans, where more than 8 million tons of plastic waste is dumped each year.
It is not just the poorest nations that end up receiving waste from the first world. Even relatively well-off countries in Southeast Asia, like Malaysia or Thailand, have been used as dumping grounds. But, as the populations in developing countries have increased, along with their own consumption of goods and greater environmental awareness, it is becoming difficult for governments in the region to continue turning a blind eye to this hazardous trade.
Each year, hundreds of millions of tons of waste is traded and most of it ends up in landfills or the water systems of developing nations.
Ranvir S. Nayar
China took the lead last year, when it announced an outright ban on imports of plastics and waste paper. A country that had previously accounted for nearly 56 percent of global plastic recycling suddenly became out of bounds and desperate exporters, almost all in developed nations, began looking for new sites to dump waste. This led to a huge increase in exports to Southeast Asia and this has now backfired on the West, as almost all of these nations have closed their ports to first-world garbage.
In many ways, “recycling” is a developed world myth created to assuage its conscience, as most of it does not happen in the country of the waste’s origin, or anywhere else for that matter. A World Bank report said last year that less than 10 percent of waste was actually treated, while the balance was simply dumped or burned illegally and openly in developing countries.
This pushback from the developing nations represents a unique opportunity for the entire world to rethink its garbage policies and curb waste generation at source, either by cutting down consumption or by using more biodegradable materials than ever before.
- Ranvir S. Nayar is managing editor of Media India Group, a global platform based in Europe and India, which encompasses publishing, communication and consultation services