The Globalization of the Plastic Waste Trade

Tim Krupnik

It is impossible to understand the waste crisis in the third world without considering the larger economic processes which drivdriving e the growth of garbage. Across the globe, poor countries are facing the expansion of non-biodegradable garbage on an unprecedented scale. This can be attributed largely to four factors: (A) the uncontrolled import of waste materials for disposal, (B) the increased import of inexpensive consumer goods (largely from industrialized countries) designed with disposable packaging, (C) the unregulated production of non-biodegradable wastes on a national scale and (D) the ongoing loss of rural livelihoods and the thrust towards urban migration. In either situation the results are the same: the growth of pollution and environmental health hazards. Plastic wastes in particular are endemic to this “globalization of garbage” as they can not be easily re-used or reprocessed and have numerous associated health risks.

Import Trends and Economics

Third world nations, previously unaccustomed to handling large volumes of non-degradeable garbage, are now faced with a barrage of solid waste management problems. Many of the economic forces that have lead the way for rapid expansion of product marketing can be traced to the Word Bank (WB), a multilateral “development” organization. The WB, along with it’s sister groups the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is known to lend millions of dollars to third world governments to finance large infractstructural and industrial projects.[1] To insure that these loans can be repaid, receiving nations are usually forced to agree to “development” programs by which the economy is restructured so as to generate revenue, making the country solvent. These “structural adjustment programs” (SAP’s) are intended to open third world countries to increased and liberalized trade while reducing government expenditure on social services—the typical recipe of the free market model of economic development. Similar SAP programs have been instituted throughout the third world. In contrast to the Bank’s stated reasons for adjustment programs—poverty alleviation and development—the effect of such economic tampering has been disastrous.

Evidence from over 80 SAP countries has shown that they have generally failed in their goals of development and poverty alleviation. [2] The true nature of SAP programs are difficult not to comprehend: the leveraging open of markets for consumer goods imported from wealthy countries while increasing the export of raw materials and assembled products (for consumption in wealthier countries) from SAP nations. Increased international trade has lead to a coresponding growth in material imported to the global south, which results in excessive waste. Additionally, the International Finance Corporation has funded numerous PVC production faciltiies across the global south. This has lead to an increase in pollution (namely dioxin, a Persistant Organic Pollutant (POP)) as well as direct waste materials.

The impact of SAP programs can be seen globally. In many Asian and Pacific Rim nations SAP programs entailed limiting worker’s wages in order to ensure cheap labor for the clothing assembly industry. Many of these countries have experienced increased waste due to the explosive growth of industry and imports. The impacts of SAP’s can be felt far beyond the industrial sector: many third world nations are now flooded with cheap imported goods produced in developed countries. With these goods comes increased packaging, namely plastics, which are then discarded into he environment. In places where a recycling or waste management structure has not yet been developed, the resulting impact on the environment is extreme.

Recycling facilities have followed a similar trajectory. During the latter part of the century, the majority of the western United State’s PET reprocessing facilities closed down. Due to the lack of investment in domestic recycling infrastructure combined with the ongoing federal subsidies for virgin resource extraction[3] and the explosive growth of plastic packaging, materials brokers (middle-men who purchase scrap materials and sell them at a profit) looked to new and lucrative markets. India, China (notably the Shanghai region), and Pacific Rim Countries became major destinations for post consumer plastic With markets that boast low wage structures, these contries became a magnet for imported waste from the Western United States.

For the developed countries it works out perfectly. "The European Union norms do not allow members to produce more plastic than they can recycle. But they are allowed to produce if they export the plastic waste for recycling to other countries. They conveniently export plastic waste that they are unable to handle domestically," says Kisan Mehta, president of Mumbai-based non-governmental organization (NGO) Save Bombay Committee. A ‘Briefing Paper on Pepsi, Plastic Production and Recycling’ prepared by Greenpeace International way back in 1994 points out how plastic waste export from the us to India increased from 3,974 metric tones (MT) in 1992 to 7,841 MT in 1993 — an increase of 97.3 per cent in just one year. While India allows import of plastic waste only under license a substantial amount of it is illegally imported.

These countries, however, imported more than simply recyclable materials: In India, “ …the senior manager of the Futura plant, Dr. L.R. Subbaraman, estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the waste can be processed at his factory, but the rest is either too contaminated with residual materials or other garbage that arrives mixed in with the shipment, or is the wrong type of plastic.” [4] Consequently, 30-40% of the material imported must be disposed of locally , adding to the waste problem. Moreover, many of these facilities are ill-managed and poor working conditions are frequent. Again, in India:

The factory which employs mostly women and children, does not have even a first-aid box, no ventilation or safety devices. Like the lead batteries, much of the plastic waste processed here is imported from the West…. Some workers have worked in this plastic-recycling factory most of their lives. Another man interviewed does not know his exact age ("Must be somewhere around 25," he shrugs), and it's equally hard to estimate. Hard work and long hours in unventilated rooms breathing fumes from melting plastics have taken a toll. His daughter was born deaf and dumb. His brother, who lives with him, suddenly started having seizures, despite no family history of related illness. The man blames it on the pollution caused by over 50 such plastics recycling units in his village.…Local authorities do not do much about these units. How can you prove that these plastic and lead recycling factories are causing these problems? They ask, dismissing such arguments. Studies are time consuming and expensive. So business continues for the owners, and villagers die a slow death…. During the past two years, as the local health clinic doctor confirms, there has been a sharp increase in lung disorders. Over 40 villagers are chronic asthmatics. There are not enough free bronchodilators to hand out.[5]

What’s worse, is that such recycling facilities follow the ideologies that have been historically promoted within the WB. Take for example the now infamous quote by Laurency Sanders, Then president of the WB. In a memo that was leaked to the public, Sanders explains the economic “logic” of third world pullution:

'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.[6]

To this day, Asian and Pacific Rim countries are grappling with the effects of such statements. As the idelogy of economic growth drives the market, waste volumes will continue to increase.

Waste Management” and Disposal Issues: Impacts on Environmental Health.

Because of inadequate refuse collection and disposal systems in third world nations, plastic wastes are commonly dealt with in several ways: terrestrial disposal, disposal into streams, canals and by burning. Each has serious consequences. Plastic bags, juice, and water bottles are discarded onto the ground when the consumer has finished with them. Because plastics are not biodegradable, they remain at their point of disposal until moved by the wind or by the rain. Plastics then commingle with other waste materials in gutters and drainage pathways. These form miniature dams and water flow obstructions that disrupt sewage and rain run-off paths. This causes serious urban flooding.

Take for example Cite Soleil, in Part Au Prince, Haiti. Perhaps the most impoverished three square miles in the Western Hemisphere, approximately 500,000 people live crammed into a dense, maze-like shanty town. Because the area lacks a formal sewage system, people make due by relieving themselves in alley-ways, streets and near garbage piles. Plastics, like other refuse, is disposed of at random. Comparatively little is burnt because the density of the area invites increased fire-risks.

The tropics are known for torrential downpours of rain. In places like Cite Soleil, the consequences of such rainfall can be devastating. Plastic products often lodge themselves in potential water drainage paths, causing damming and subsequent flooding. When this occurs, sewage laden waters spread across the landscape and into peoples’ homes. This in turn elevates the health risk: if people are not immediately flooded out of their homes, they have to navigate a swampy and precarious terrain.

Infectious water born diseases (some which are a result of unclean water and others which are a result of “pooled” water) like scabies, malaria and hepatitis are easily contracted in such a degraded environment. To illustrate the seriousness of this problem, consider the latter part of May, 2002. During two days of particularly fierce rains, over 200 families in Cite Soleil lost their make shift homes due to flooding. Although other factors played into this disaster, waste materials, notably plastics, greatly exacerbated the flooding.

There exists another popular means of waste disposal—local incineration. In many third world nations one can see vast clouds of black smoke rising from households and market places. These smoke clouds come from burning piles of garbage, both organic and inorganic, and are a serious cause of airborne pollution. While incineration of wastes (in this case community burning or “back yard” burning) appears appealing (the volume of tangible wastes shrinks by up to 80%), it is perhaps the most damaging method of waste disposal from a human health perspective. When plastics are burned they release a deadly mix of chemicals to the atmosphere notably dioxin (in the case of PVC) and other poisonous chemicals (CO2, CO, SO2). When PVC is incinerated, the result is even more problematic: Dioxin, a Persistant Organic Pollutant and leading cause of cancer, is released anytime chlorinated plastics are produced or combusted.

Dioxin particles are carried by the wind until they drop onto land or water. We now know that dioxin can travel thousands of miles. Grazing animals and fish ingest the toxin, but they can not break it down, so it travels up the food chain. Ninety Percent of human exposure to dioxin occurs through diets of meat, dairy products and fish. …every person has some amount of dioxin in their body.[7]

In this sense, the problem of plastics, and indeed toxic pollution, is dispersed across the globe. Consequently, “no-burn” communities can fall victim to irresponsible waste management practices thousands of miles away.

Industrial incineration has been widely regarded as an appropriate “quick fix” to the waste management crisis, especially in developing countries. Large lending institutions like the World Bank have long favored incineration in blatant disregard of the pollution that it creates.[8] By funding incineration on an industrial scale, the Bank has succeeded in ‘vanishing” the garbage problem by dispersing it into the atmosphere, thus creating multiple other problems, notably the impairment of human health. The miniscule amount of energy produced by incineration pales in comparison to the magnitude of the problems created. In fact, the Grassroots Recycling Network estimates that incineration produces only a fraction of the energy that would in fact be saved if materials were recycled rather than burnt. 8

.1 The IFC, however, lends strictly to corporations. They have financed numerous plastic production plants, including more than five PVC (the most toxic of plastics) plants.

2.Naiman, Arthur and Zepezauer, Mark. Oil and Gas Tax Breaks: $2.4 billion a year excerpted from the book Take the Rich Off Welfare. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/Oil_Tax_Breaks.html (1996)

It is a well known fact that tax breaks approved by the US Government have long driven oil exploration and extraction. Dating back to the “oil depletion allowance” of 1926, this manipulation of finances has served to drive the growth of the virgin oil economy. “The current oil and gas tax breaks encourage the use of fossil fuels at the expense of cleaner alternatives, reward drilling in environmentally sensitive areas like wetlands and estuaries, and artificially attract to the oil industry investment money that could be used more productively in other areas of the economy,” explains Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman. “the oil depletion allowance lets certain companies deduct 15% of the gross income they derive from oil and gas wells from their taxable incomes, and continue to do that for as long as those wells are still producing…This tax break, on which we lose about $1 billion a year, can add up to many times the cost of the original exploration and drilling. In fact, it formerly could amount to 100% of the company's profits-in which case the company paid no taxes, no matter how much money it made.” It is because of such market manipulation that recycled plastics are more costly to produce (and thus more expensive) than recycled content plastics. Consequently, the best market for the reprocessing of plastic is a market that restricts “unnecessary costs” such as the US based minimum wage, etc. This market is the third world market.

3.Leonard, Ann. Dumping Pepsi’s Plastic. In the Multi-national Monitor. http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Dumping-Pepsi-Plastic-India94.htm. (1994)

4 Agarwal, Ravi. India's Booming Toxic Waste Trade. In The Monitor. http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9809a/indiawaste.html (2000)

5Sanders, Laurence (1991) Memo reprinted by The Whirled bank Group, http://www.whirledbank.org/ourwords/summers.html. (2002)

6Essential Action. What is Dioxin. http://www.no-burn.org/resources/index.html. (2002)

Culmulative exposure to dioxin is a serious health problem and can lead to a range of cancers.

7Multinational Resource Center/Health Care Without Harm. The World Bank’s Dangerous Medicine: Promoting Medical Waste Incineration in Third World Countries. http://www.essentialaction.org/waste/worldbank/ (2002)

8Sheenan, Bill. Zero Waste, Recycling and Climate Change http://www.grrn.org/zerowaste/climate_change.html (2000)

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[1] The IFC, however, lends strictly to corporations. They have financed numerous plastic production plants, including more than five PVC (the most toxic of plastics) plants.

[2] McGowan, Lisa. Democracy Undermines, Economic Justice Denied: Structural Adjustment and the Aid Juggernaut in Haiti. http://www.developmentgap.org/haiti97.html (1997)

[3] Naiman, Arthur and Zepezauer, Mark. Oil and Gas Tax Breaks: $2.4 billion a year excerpted from the book Take the Rich Off Welfare. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/Oil_Tax_Breaks.html (1996)

It is a well known fact that tax breaks approved by the US Government have long driven oil exploration and extraction. Dating back to the “oil depletion allowance” of 1926, this manipulation of finances has served to drive the growth of the virgin oil economy. “The current oil and gas tax breaks encourage the use of fossil fuels at the expense of cleaner alternatives, reward drilling in environmentally sensitive areas like wetlands and estuaries, and artificially attract to the oil industry investment money that could be used more productively in other areas of the economy,” explains Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman. “the oil depletion allowance lets certain companies deduct 15% of the gross income they derive from oil and gas wells from their taxable incomes, and continue to do that for as long as those wells are still producing…This tax break, on which we lose about $1 billion a year, can add up to many times the cost of the original exploration and drilling. In fact, it formerly could amount to 100% of the company's profits-in which case the company paid no taxes, no matter how much money it made.” It is because of such market manipulation that recycled plastics are more costly to produce (and thus more expensive) than recycled content plastics. Consequently, the best market for the reprocessing of plastic is a market that restricts “unnecessary costs” such as the US based minimum wage, etc. This market is the third world market.

[4] Leonard, Ann. Dumping Pepsi’s Plastic. In the Multi-national Monitor. http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Dumping-Pepsi-Plastic-India94.htm. (1994)

[5] Agarwal, Ravi. India's Booming Toxic Waste Trade. In The Monitor. http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9809a/indiawaste.html (2000)

[6] Sanders, Laurence (1991) Memo reprinted by The Whirled bank Group, http://www.whirledbank.org/ourwords/summers.html. (2002)

[7] Essential Action. What is Dioxin. http://www.no-burn.org/resources/index.html. (2002)

Culmulative exposure to dioxin is a serious health problem and can lead to a range of cancers.

[8] Multinational Resource Center/Health Care Without Harm. The World Bank’s Dangerous Medicine: Promoting Medical Waste Incineration in Third World Countries. http://www.essentialaction.org/waste/worldbank/ (2002)