The shadowy and unjust world of global waste trade

That plastic belongs in the PMD tray, a broken smartphone must go to the environment and old clothing in the textile box, that is all known. But do we know what happens to it afterwards? And whether our waste also passes the national borders?

The American journalist Alexander Clapp immersed himself in the shadowy and unjust world of global waste trade for years. His first book Coarse dirt (Waste Wars) In a sense, how rich have been dumping their waste on the poor for decades. About how the Western colonizers had barely left the global south when ships appeared that would dump western toxic waste in those same countries. And how still (sometimes under the guise of reuse or recycling) distant countries are contaminated with Western waste.

Coarse dirt is not the first book that describes the global waste trade – and the billion -dollar economy behind it. It is great how meticulously Clapp tries to understand the problems of this sector. To tell this story, he travels five continents. For example, he makes attempts to trace an undiscovered dangerous waste in the jungle of Guatemala for weeks. He is sitting on the couch with the parents of a thirties from Turkey who was burned alive when he tried to dismantle an American cruise ship. He also visits, also in Turkey, a man who was dumped western waste on his lemon and orange orchard at night on his lemon and orange orchard. In the volcanic highlands of Java he searches for the ‘waste villages’ that are overloaded by European and American household waste.

In Ghana he follows a young man who sets fire to electronic waste-iPhone ears, laptop chargers, USB wires-in the open air six days a week to remove the copper. While the chemical residue drops into the bottom, the man earns 3 dollars a day. He dreams enough to save a life in his native region, but some days cannot feel his arms and legs good and cough up blood at night.

Clapp sees from close by how advanced technology such as iPhones and laptops are being demolished in distant countries by simply storing it with Hamers. How products are discarded within a few seconds, and then traveling the world for months. Such as packaging that you throw away almost immediately.

From close and high over

The book is strong because Clapp can not only view the waste problem up close, but also high. He continues to ask himself follow -up questions. Such as: where did Ghana become the electronics pouring place of the world? Because it made a desperate attempt to join the internet economy by importing old electronics.

Clapp describes how legislation against the export of hazardous waste to developing countries ensured that waste was given new names. It suddenly started to be called ‘building material’, ‘fuel’, or ‘recovered by -products’. He describes how a luxury cruise ship advertised about how sustainable its demolition would happen. The ship was taken to a demolition place approved by the EU in Turkey. Subsequently, it was actually dismantled at the adjacent scrap yard, without EU control. Two people were killed during an unexpected fire in the engine room.

It is right that Clapp De Kaak states that waste trade is sometimes a criminal affair. Moreover, successive laws and measures do not work enough to protect the environment. Last January, the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate still reported have intercepted the smuggling of 33 containers of hazardous waste. The load was from Jamaica and Puerto Rico via the Netherlands en route to India. These were lead acid batteries that contain very toxic substances and can catch fire. The transport was registered as harmless plastic and metal residues.

Clapp sees injustice everywhere and although that is often there, he can turn it on. He sometimes ignores the fact that part of the waste that is being dragged over is actually recycled. In those countries the energy and wage costs are lower and then recycling can suddenly be released.

According to him, the opaque world of the dismantling of ships is « rarely spoken since it is actually not the intention that you are aware of it. »

And according to him, the ships that are dismantled on polluted beaches look like « slaughter cattle, stripped of guts and chopped into pieces ». Such language is not necessary in a journalistic book, the subject is also sensational enough.

Disposable culture

Clapp not only holds the waste sector responsible. He also puts the debt with producers who impose consumers a disposable culture. Such as oil and plastic producers who have consciously exaggerating the potential of recycling for decades, and in the meantime lobbying against all the measures that could limit plastic use. Producers of telephones whose lifespan is shortened with software updates, or devices that are extra difficult to repair.

And indeed, those who consider how much valuable metals are needed for a smartphone, finds it absurd that an estimated four hundred thousand telephones per day are thrown away in the US alone.

For the future, it is more to embrace the art of waste. Instead of allowing even more nature to make way for rare metals with polluting mines (or to get them from the deep sea or from asteroids), it is better to find the raw materials from our waste, Clapp thinks. Provided it goes responsibly, and the Western world is not simply his problem left the world.

Liza Van Lonkhuyzen

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