Out of sight, out of mind2

To be ‘green’ has become the buzz word of the 21st century thanks largely to the struggle undertaken by environmentalists to get their issues onto the mainstream agenda throughout the last two decades of the last century. If one goes back twenty years recycling was far from the norm that it is considered to be today, indeed people across the UK now face fines if they do not separate their glass from their plastics etc… One has to wonder whether it has been worth all the trouble, especially when reports continually emerge that much of the rubbish that is so painstakingly separated for recycling simply ends up in large landfill sites anyway!

Moreover as recent reports in the media have shown not only does our rubbish end up in landfills – but we are actually exporting this rubbish to other countries around the world. More recently, Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, has ordered an investigation into two British companies linked to 90 shipping containers containing 1,400 tonnes of waste that were exported to ports in Brazil and will now have to be returned to the UK.  Not only is this damaging to Britain’s claims to be leading the world in the fight against climate change, such activities threaten habitats, ecosystems and endanger the lives of millions, including children who often have no choice but to work in the terrible conditions of scrapyards such as the one at Agbogbloshie, near Accra in Ghana. The locals refer to Agbogbloshie as Sodom and Gomorrah as it has quickly become one of the world’s digital dumping grounds, where hundreds of millions of tons of the West’s electronic waste piles up every year. According to The Times, this dangerous trade in obsolete electronic products is being encouraged in part by Britain as they claim to have seen computers that had once been used in the offices of the Ministry of Defence.

Many countries simply do not have the capacity to deal with the sheer quantity of e-waste they generate or with its hazardous nature. Therefore, they export the problem to developing countries where laws to protect workers and the environment are inadequate or not enforced. According to Greenpeace it is also cheaper to ‘recycle’ waste in developing countries; the cost of glass-to-glass recycling of computer monitors in the US is ten times more than in China. Even in the European Union, which has some of the most stringent controls on e-waste, an estimated 75 per cent of it is unaccounted for. Despite the fact that it is illegal to export e-waste under international agreements, it is not illegal to export old electronics for re-use. Consequently, some unscrupulous traders have been exploiting the loophole. In a report in July 2009 the United Nations said that organised crime cartels, already active in drug smuggling in the region, were moving into the lucrative e-waste trade. The UN has promised a co-ordinated approach in an attempt to keep it in check.

While they co-ordinate this approach they should also examine the activity in the seas off the coast of Somalia where reports are rife that US, Canadian, French and British ships have been dumping waste, taking advantage of the the lack of a strong and coherent Government. In fact, such activities have actually prompted some Somalis to take to the seas to protect their own livelihoods, as the dumping has all but destroyed the local fishing industry, some call them pirates, others see them as performing the job that the Government is incapable of doing. Meanwhile, whilst the more ‘developed’ countries in the world continue to export the problem of waste, countries such as India (whilst far from being an exemplar of good environmental practice) are actually looking at ways of introducing the world’s most ambitious solar energy plan. Furthermore the videos reporting the dumping of waste near Somalia have strangely disappeared from YouTube, apparently due to terms of use violation, so one has to ask the question: is it simply a case of out of sight, out of mind when it comes to the waste we produce?