During the late '70s, the world was rocked by news of "garbage" ships that sailed from the United States, going port to port and dumping their hazardous cargo on the shores of Africa. Industries that found it was expensive to contain or minimize the waste locally shipped it overseas for dumping, aided by local African traders and middlemen. African nations lacked facilities for waste dumping, so it could be thrown anywhere.

As the costs of managing waste at the local level increased, it became cheaper to transport wastes to the global South. The world was shamed into waking up and over the next decade policymakers huddled to come up with international legislation banning such "waste imperialism."

Life on the bottom rung in India

The outcome was international treaties like the Basel Convention to stop waste from being exported from developed to developing countries. The United States never signed the Basel Convention because it didn't want any international controls on its waste exports and it saw such restrictions as interfering with its consumption pattern. But the flow of waste (see sidebar) is changing now that the world is evolving into a single economic entity.

Trade is becoming borderless. The globalization of markets and industry means that production and consumption is no longer confined within the borders of nation-states. The manufacturing, consumption and disposal of goods are geographically separated like never before.

Production takes place in one country, products are consumed in another, and disposed in a third. Hence a computer may be manufactured in Asia, used in North America and disposed in India.

Recently, the pattern is shifting away from exporting developed countries' wastes to developing countries. Instead, products are being produced in the South for consumption in the North so that waste is now generated in the South by the same corporations that follow cleaner practices in the North.

Bases of production are shifting from developed to developing countries such as China and the countries of Southeast Asia in order to take advantage of cheaper labor, weaker environmental controls, and lax regulations. Translocation to the South enables cost cutting all around, although the burden of waste is borne by local peoples and their environment.

The South is becoming dirtier as the North becomes cleaner. This must stop.

The New Globalization of Waste

Direct Dumping: Traditional Waste Flow

In February 2001, an industrial plant that uses toxic mercury in the U.S. state of Maine was closed and 200 tons of mercury was shipped to India as a raw material for chlor alkali plants that convert brine into chlorine and caustic soda. The Indian Government was not aware of this consignment and raised the issue with the U.S. government.

However, the U.S. government didn't want to intervene because it considered this to be a private trade under U.S. laws. The issue was made public by citizen groups like Toxics Link in India in partnership with other groups in the United States. Timely international civil society action blocked the toxic shipment.

Plastics are another common example. Driven by improved collection in Europe and North America, plastics are being dumped into India and Bangladesh for "recycling" that takes place in shanty-like conditions.

In many Asian countries, waste recycling is a livelihood, albeit a very hazardous one. This adds to the waste already present in these countries, and becomes an easy form of disposal for countries that can easily afford to safely dispose of waste on their own shores.

New Forms of Waste Flows

Products are becoming increasingly toxic and chemical laden, including PVC plastic containers, metal cans with toxic paints, multi-layered packaging, batteries and even genetically modified foods, all of which produce waste that can be hazardous or toxic. High disposal costs in developed countries provides an incentive to simply ship waste to countries in South Asia that are grappling with a variety of developmental problems.

Environment and health issues are still not very high on the agenda in South Asia. In any case, even when there is a consciousness or laws that address such problems, regulation is weak and expensive.

Workers bear the brunt of occupational and industrial risks in unprotected working environments, as well as job insecurity through inappropriate environmental action

Waste now comes to the shores of developing countries under different guises. For example, electronic waste is labeled as second-hand computers, ostensibly to help schools and villages run education programs.

Export of Dirty Products

In the globalized economy, many products that are hazardous or difficult to recycle safely are being exported to developing countries without the associated safety standards of their countries of origin. Although it lacks environmental safeguards that are present elsewhere, the South is allowing sales of these new products and packaging.

Examples include car batteries that are very unsafe if recycled in the type of facilities operating in India; asbestos, more than 80 percent of which comes to India from mines in Canada where local use of asbestos is banned; and new packaging (e.g., multi-material juice packets) that is recycled in the countries of origin but also is sold in countries that lack facilities for recycling such materials.

Recently, the export of electronic waste is assuming startling proportions. Used electronics such as computers, mobile phones, and telephones are being dumped in China and India, mainly due to obsolescence. The United States alone exports more than 10 million tons annually.

The waste from these products contains toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, lead in computer monitors, mercury in lamps and chips, and flame-retardants in plastics. Research by Toxics Link shows that this high-tech waste is recycled in very unhealthy conditions in New Delhi.

Toxics Link helped raise this issue at the United Nations. As a start, nine of the world's major mobile phone companies have signed a partnership with the Basel Secretariat to minimize the problem of waste from their devices.

In November 2002, the United States ordered that more than 300 of its discarded rusting naval vessels be sent offshore to ship breaking facilities in India, Bangladesh and China. Ships are also sent from Russia, Europe and other countries, though in Europe there are now new laws to prevent such trade.

Toxics Link has been working to improve conditions at the ship breaking yard in coalition with other citizen groups and trade unions, and has taken the issue to the United Nations and the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

Export of Waste Technologies

Waste management technologies follow waste exports, but technology standards in the South are much weaker than those of developed countries. Southern countries are unable to afford to set more stringent standards because this makes products too expensive.

Available technology is inadequate in some cases. For example, medical waste incinerators in Europe are made to strict standards and require pollution control equipment that makes them many times more costly than those manufactured in Asia.

Europe does not use low-quality incinerators anymore, and has switched to safer technologies such as autoclaves and microwaves. But some companies are still trying to sell the obsolete technologies to Asia without disclosing the dangers of using such devices. Srishti filed an action in the Supreme Court of India in 1996 ensuring that cleaner technologies are allowed by law, and it constantly endeavors to stop such dumping practices.

Instead of selling safer technologies, some companies prefer to sell only those products that can no longer be sold at home. At present, there are more than 20 such proposals to various municipalities in India alone, as well as to the Indian Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources, from companies that are trying to sell untried technologies such as incinerators and gasifiers (a type of incinerator). Toxics Link has been organizing citizen's groups around the country to stop this from happening.

New Business for Waste Companies

Until recently, the business of handling waste in countries like India was off limits to multinational corporations, but no more. The international waste industry has arrived in India.

These ventures are financed by national governmental subsidies and international financial institutions such as the World Bank or the IFC. However, many of the technologies proposed by these multinational corporations are not economically viable and are environmentally hazardous.

In many Indian cities, these ventures are displacing community projects that have been operating for years. For example, the Chennai municipality awarded a contract to the international waste giant Vivendi Environnement, displacing a community-led initiative called Exnora from three municipal zones in 2001.

For decades, Exnora has was been an outstanding community effort. Its door-to-door collection system was replaced by street bins that serve haulage points where Vivendi takes mixed waste to a landfill. When Vivendi's employees went on a strike a year ago, garbage spilled onto the streets because the community system had broken down.

Impacts of Global Waste on the South

The South has not yet developed the capacity to deal with waste's global linkages. In fact, many new products that eventually become waste are consumed within the South, mainly by a rich minority.

Supermarkets are flooded with consumer goods such as refrigerators, washing machines and television sets. Cars are used by a small portion of the population. The rich buy new computers, while older models find their way into the hands of more deprived consumers.

Migrating family, Gujarat, India 1998

The waste is then dumped onto the poorer communities, which shoulder the greatest burden of the impact of globalization. Those who suffer most are often the poorest of the poor.

Siting Waste Dumps

In most Asian cities, waste dumps are sited on the outskirts of cities or on low-value, low-lying land, which is also where the poor live. In 1984, an incinerator was installed in New Delhi in the midst of such a community. New landfills are being proposed for similar places.

Communities in these areas bear the brunt of the impacts of polluted groundwater, air emissions and unsanitary surroundings. The groundwater of a low-income neighborhood, next to a landfill in Delhi, has been heavily contaminated.

Waste Recycling

Recycling is carried out in shanty conditions in developing countries with no environmental and health safeguards. Poor people who earn less than a dollar a day bear the brunt of the toxics from imported electronic waste, car batteries, used syringes, etc. This exposes them to injury, risk of diseases and their long-term health effects, asbestosis from exposure to asbestos, and exposure to the toxic fumes of mercury.

Many of the people exposed to these risks are women and children and people with very low nutritional status, making them vulnerable even to very low-level exposures. Srishti has researched this sector extensively and has been working to improve the conditions of their environment.

Workers, Farmers and Communities

New manufacturing facilities that cater to international markets are converting agricultural fields into industrial areas. Normally farmers have little say in such land conversion because they are forced to give up their land by the government.

The law requires that they be compensated for this, yet more often than not their compensation is withheld or is inadequate to provide for an alternative livelihood. The problems are more acute for marginal farmers who have small land holdings.

This creates problems on two fronts: farmers who lose their livelihood are forced to become laborers in cities, and the adjoining agricultural fields bear the full impact of the pollution they help create, as recent studies of contaminated crops demonstrate.

Industrial workers in developing countries operate in very hazardous conditions where proper occupational health and safety standards are lacking. Almost 90 percent of the workforce receives daily wages and is unable to negotiate its rights.

Poor conditions are common in asbestos and computer factories and recycling facilities. Almost all ship breaking workers are migrant laborers with no recourse to justice even as they face life-threatening risks on the job.

The 1984 gas disaster in Bhopal India exposed the double standards employed by corporations when they locate their production facilities in the South. The disaster killed more than 5,000 people in a matter of hours when gas leaked from a poorly maintained Union Carbide plant.

It has left many times that number struggling for their lives even to this date. A study by Srishti revealed that extremely hazardous chemicals from the closed plant can be traced to the breast milk of women in surrounding communities, putting new generations at risk. Drinking water also is contaminated.

Likewise the factory of a multinational corporation in South India that manufactures mercury thermometers solely for export to the United States has irrevocably poisoned workers and the surrounding environment.

The Way Ahead

It is becoming increasingly clear that products in the globalized economy generate an international trail of waste – a burden that is borne by the poorest and most marginalized communities in the world. They often lack protections.

Any solution must be based on fundamental approaches such as the precautionary principle that is recognized in international and national laws. When a process, practice or product raises potentially significant threats to human health and environment, precautionary action should be taken to restrict or ban it.

Hence new types of waste, untried technology to handle waste, and unsafe industrial processes should not be permitted. Necessary actions include making industry accountable, strengthening local initiatives, maintaining the precautionary principle and refusing to accept waste from other countries.

Profits and environmental concerns must coexist. Companies make profits by minimizing production costs and maximizing markets globally, but they leave a trail of waste behind. Somebody must be responsible for it.

While wealthier consumers may eventually pay more for products, it is the poor who suffer the consequences of global waste flows. Assigning responsibility for waste management to manufacturers and consumers will drive actions "upstream," which should lead to more sustainable products that are free of toxins and recyclable, as is happening in the design of new cars in Europe.

Today, may of the components of cars are reusable. They can be easily dismantled for recycling and reuse of materials.

As products and their associated waste streams become globalized, there must a globalization of responsibility for managing the wastes. International corporations must clean up contaminated sites like Bhopal, as the "polluter pays" principle mandates, and as they are required to do at home under laws like the U.S. Superfund law.

The Superfund requires cleanup of contaminated sites in the United States with funds provided by the polluter. Some sites have cost more than US$100 million to clean, and typically the total cost for cleanup is about US$30 million.

Today, poor nations look upon waste as a resource. The economic benefits from salvaging waste and recycling must be environmentally sustainable.

These activities must meet the genuine needs of the present without compromising future generations or polluting the earth's natural life support systems. This requires creating accountable clean production by businesses and recycling systems in the nations of the South.

New Partnerships and Role of Civil Society

Civil society and the citizen groups that represent it play a pivotal role in making necessary change. Southern citizen groups like Toxics Link and Srishti demonstrate how to do this through activities such as providing information, raising awareness, finding and advocating alternative actions.

One of their prime responsibilities is disseminating useful information because information is the key to change. Toxics Link provides information about problems and solutions to thousands of people in India on an ongoing basis, and it has helped build the capacities of local communities so they can change their environment.

Raising the awareness of both consumers and policymakers can help stop the trade in waste, as in the example of the mercury trade described above. Direct action can help hold responsible those who pollute, and create conditions and pressures for change.

Srishti played a key role in helping introduce cleaner medical waste disposal technologies into India that replaced polluting incinerators. By taking the issue to the Supreme Court of India they managed to change policy.

Later they encouraged businesses in India to manufacture and market cleaner technologies such as autoclaves and microwaves, and help put the country on a cleaner path. Srishti also forms partnerships with local community groups and municipalities to improve waste management. They have helped workers improve occupational safety and have provided training programs for Environmental Pollution Board staff, private service providers, businesses, and hospital staff.

Global environmental sustainability must extend beyond national boundaries. Partnerships, the theme of the WSSD, requires that previously independent players come together to solve problems. The underlying theme is that responsibility must be borne by all stakeholders.

Ravi Agarwal
SRISHTI and Toxics Link
H-2, Jangpura Extension, Ground Floor
New Delhi Delhi 110014
India
Tel: (91) 11 4328006, 4320711
Fax: (91) 11 4321747
Web: www.toxicslink.org
Email: ravig@del6.vsnl.net.in

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