Plastic waste trafficking: An ever-growing environmental crime that needs to be tackled

摘要

The illegal export of waste, also known as waste trafficking, is a worrying phenomenon in waste management around the world. This specific type of environmental crime has extremely negative effects on sustainable resource management, causing significant harm to the environment, human health, or both. When plastics are exported illegally, they are largely non-recyclable, so they eventually just get burned or landfilled in an uncontrolled fashion upon arrival at their final destination. They also carry a wide range of hazardous chemicals for which no control is carried out and no restrictions are applied. These chemicals will leak into the local environment due to improper storage and treatment. Thus, there are numerous reports that the ground in areas where plastic waste has been illegally burned tends to be composed of shredded plastics instead of soil. In these areas, high concentrations of heavy metals such as lead and cadmium are also found that can cause damage to human health by affecting the nervous system, the brain, kidneys or lungs, respectively. Naturally, with only 9% of the world's plastic waste being recycled via legal and controlled procedures, it is not just the soil that is adversely affected. It is estimated that about 4 to 12 million megatonnes of plastic waste enter the oceans each year, polluting the coasts, sea surface and seabed. Moreover, UNEP and INTERPOL have estimated that environmental crime is now the fourth most lucrative illegal business in the world, worth up to $258 billion annually and bound to increase significantly in the future. In Italy, for example, many mafia-related companies, termed ecomafia, monopolize waste management contracts involving waste trafficking and illegal dumping. The Calabrian mafia deliberately sank ships carrying radioactive and nuclear materials in the ocean off the coast of Calabria. Mafia-related organisations illegally bury waste in southern Italy and build real estate on top of the dumps. Between 2002 and 2019, approximately 54 million tonnes of waste were counted in the illegal trade of ecomafia. Interestingly enough, ecomafia organizations have allied with the Chinese mafia, and cooperate with them on international enterprises related to environmental crime. Today, despite the tireless and valiant efforts of the Italian environmental police, the ecomafia is growing again and reaching an estimated profit of 16.6 billion euros a year. It should be noted, however, that although public perception in Italy attributes most environmental crime to criminal organizations, corporations in Italy commit environmental crimes more frequently than criminal organizations with mafia ties.