[throwgfgfd25]

> I'd hazard the actual problem in this picture is Ghana's GDP/capita being in 4 digit territory and not the badly disposed of waste dump.

But if Ghana became a wealthy country and chose not to accept this waste, it will end up in the next one.

The waste exists regardless, and the economic incentive for the original market "export" it, that is, hide the problem, and the receiving country to reluctantly accept it for some other consideration, whether it be money or state aid or tariff-free export of something else, will always exist while the waste does.

Re: "badly disposed of waste dump", the difference between this and landfill anywhere in the west is largely just the soil on top. Staggering amounts of recyclable and dangerous stuff still gets thrown away in inappropriate ways right near where you live, I imagine. And if the global North exports waste to the global South, sooner or later the scale almost inevitably overwhelms the receiver.

[roenxi]

There are a finite number of poor countries. At the rate wealth is being generated it is conceivable that they all get wealthy enough that the waste gets handled well.

And this stuff all started out in heavy metals deposits, it is already present underground somewhere. The only real question is how serious the effects on humans are with any method of disposal. It isn't at all clear there is a problem as long as it is buried fairly deep and not leeching into the water table.

[phkahler]

>> There are a finite number of poor countries. At the rate wealth is being generated it is conceivable that they all get wealthy enough that the waste gets handled well.

This waste was dumped. The fact that poor people moved to the dump to make a living scavenging is a secondary phenomenon. Without them it still would have been dumped.

[roenxi]

Yeah but it being dumped, in the abstract, doesn't matter. It is like complaining that there is a desert or an ocean - there are places on the earth that aren't good to live in. An electronics dump somewhere doesn't rate compared to something like the Pacific Ocean in terms of how much landmass gets sterilised.

[throwgfgfd25]

> There are a finite number of poor countries.

This is a bit of an imaginary solution to the problem, is it not? And there will always be poor_er_ countries, which is the thrust of my point.

The economic incentive does not go away. Not least because it is clearly already cheaper to float it away on a huge boat than bury it where it is used.

One problem is land cost: it's extremely difficult to safely build new houses on top of landfill. But that doesn't explain everything, does it? After all the USA has plenty of room to bury all its consumer waste. Why is it exporting it?

> And this stuff all started out in heavy metals deposits, it is already present underground somewhere.

It does not start out all in one place, though. It starts out in small, dispersed concentrations of heavy metals, and ends up all in a few giant landfills in poorer countries. It's not clear what the risk is, but the lack of clarity doesn't mean there's no risk.

[roenxi]

> This is a bit of an imaginary solution to the problem, is it not? And there will always be poor_er_ countries, which is the thrust of my point.

I don't mind if the waste comes to my country. Australia is big and we're wealthy enough that it'll be handled safely. If we were the poorest country on the globe then it'd be a non-issue.