How to Regulate Our Waste-Full World

The Basel Convention arose out of a specific concern-developed countries were dumping toxic wastes in developing countries without providing information on the hazards or how to manage them. Questions raised during the negotiations are still relevant today: What is waste and what do we do about it?

What is Waste?

This seems an easy question to answer. Not all waste is hazardous. Second-hand clothing is not toxic, but it is filling landfills at alarming rates. Household wastes are a long-standing concern for developing countries. Some illegal shipments of household wastes enter developing countries labelled as recycling. There was a major diplomatic incident in 2019 after a Canadian 'recycling' company exported waste to the Philippines that was falsely labelled as plastic for recycling. Allowed for import after the customs agents were bribed, the shipment actually contained household waste, including diapers, that was left sitting in the port for four years. The company was bankrupt, leaving the Canadian government to repatriate the shipment (Gutierrez, 2019).

During the Basel Convention negotiations, this issue of household wastes divided governments. Several developing countries argued household wastes and incinerator ash should be included in the Convention, while others argued for a strict focus on hazardous wastes, as defined by the OECD. The compromise was to create Annex IX for 'other wastes.' This allowed for flexibility-the Basel Convention could address household wastes and makes household wastes subject to the prior informed consent (PIC) procedure. But it shopped short of labelling such waste as hazardous. It also created a new annex, which would be useful for later on to address plastics. In 2019, plastic litter became the third entry to this Annex, joining household wastes and incinerator ash-the first global set of rules on plastic litter.

The question of what is waste is complicated by products that are valuable for recycling, such as ships or e-waste. If a ship sails into a port under its own power, is it waste? After years of negotiations, parties said 'yes' if the ship was destined for dismantling and disposal. Shipbreaking can be a crucial source of jobs, but it is dangerous work. Ships can contain asbestos and heavy metals, among other dangers. Without proper treatment, these hazardous wastes can lead to health problems, such as cardiovascular diseases and developmental abnormalities, and poison wildlife. Some heavy metals, notably mercury, cycle globally (Selin & Selin, 2020). Poor management in one country can affect someone's health in another.

This debate continues on e-waste. E-waste is anything with a battery or a plug-your computer, smartphone, washer, or oven. E-waste can contain dangerous chemicals, either used in the batteries or components, or as flame retardants to protect the equipment. E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world. On average, the total weight of global e-waste consumption increases annually by 2.5 million metric tons (excluding photovoltaic panels). By 2030, current volumes are expected to double (ITU, 2020). As long as there are few repair options and shorter life spans for our electronics, the problem will only increase. (See Figure 1.)

There is enormous regional variation in countries' ability to manage e-waste. In Europe, there is 16.2 kg of e-waste per person, compared to just 2.5 kg per person in Africa (ITU, 2020). Mountains of e-waste continue to pile up. Ghana now imports around 150,000 tons of second-hand electrical and electronic equipment a year. In the urban area of Agbogbloshie, many work in the digital dumping ground. It provides jobs, but also poses dangers to those in and around the city of 80,000 (Minter, 2016).

The story of e-waste is sometimes presented as a cautionary tale of how the Global North dumps its problems on the Global South. While this narrative can be true of some hazardous wastes, e-waste is more complex. South-South transfers are increasingly common. Ending overconsumption of electronic products in the North will not stop toxic fumes arising from burning e-waste in Agbogbloshie or in other developing countries (Lepawsky, 2018; Minter, 2016).

Even though the Basel Convention's parties adopted a 'provisional' set of guidelines in 2017 to help countries safely manage e-waste and understand the risks, countries still disagree on what is waste and what is a product destined for recycling or reuse.

Of the 53.6 million metric tonnes (Mt) of E-waste generated worldwide in 2019 (up by 21% in just five years), according to the UN's Global E-waste Monitor of 2020, only an estimated 17.4% are currently collected and recycled.

What Should be Done?

During the negotiation of the Basel Convention, several developing countries called for a ban of all exports from the Global North to the Global South. Other countries-both developed and some developing-wanted fewer restrictions to allow for wastes to move across borders for recycling, recovery, and re-use.

Governments compromised that the Convention would not ban global movements of hazardous waste. It only stipulated that countries should reduce their exports of hazardous wastes, and that international trade is only justified if a country lacks the domestic capacity to manage or safely dispose of the waste. Countries would use the PIC procedure, which represents the heart of the Basel Convention and is based on four key stages (1) notification; (2) consent and issuance of movement document; (3) transboundary movement; and (4) confirmation of disposal.

The PIC procedure was not the preferred option for several developing countries and non-governmental organizations. There were concerns some waste brokers would misrepresent the wastes to importing countries, labelling the wastes as 'safe' to gain consent. This 'recycling loophole' might allow hazardous waste to be labelled as recycling and dumped in developing countries (Clapp, 2002). There were even concerns fake recycling companies would export waste under the guise of recycling (Kummer, 1995, p. 49).

Efforts continued to close this loophole, while protecting the legal recycling trade. Shortly after the Convention entered into force in 1992, negotiations began on a more stringent way of managing trade of hazardous wastes. The result was the Ban Amendment that would prohibit developed countries from exporting hazardous wastes to developing countries. Adopted in 1994, it took 25 years until it received sufficient ratifications to enter into force in September 2019.

The Ban Amendment is new and untested, but its effect might be muted. Roughly 87% of the global hazardous waste trade is among developed countries (Yang, 2020). The Amendment was also negotiated in the different world of the 1990s, when global trade of hazardous wastes was dominated by North-North and North-South trade. Today, newly industrialized countries, such as India, China, and the Philippines, are importing increasing amounts of hazardous wastes for recycling and recovery from one another (Yang, 2020). Trade among these countries is not affected by the Ban Amendment because they are considered developing countries under the Convention. The Ban Amendment also anticipates that developing countries lack capacity to manage hazardous waste. This was less true today than it was in the 1990s. Regardless of their capacity, export to developing countries from developed countries (e.g., from New Zealand to Singapore) is now banned.

Nevertheless, the Ban Amendment could help protect the most vulnerable countries that lack the capacity to safely manage hazardous wastes. Rather than asking customs officials to parse out what is in a shipment and if it is safe to import, countries would not be able to send the shipment in the first place. The simplicity of the Ban Amendment could be its greatest strength.