The article delves into the high-seas drama surrounding the controversial shipment of waste material from Albania to Thailand, highlighting the perils of the global waste trade and the urgent need for better regulation.
The Toxic Cargo
The video, filmed from a boat off the coast of Durres says the waste was supposed to have been shipped to Thailand — but instead, it is floating in the Adriatic Sea. The containers were clogged with non-recyclable rubbish which was supposed to be processed and destroyed hundreds of miles off Europe.
But the legitimacy of the cargo was soon called into question, and weeks later, the chaos continued, with unknown goods bobbing in shipping containers for months off the Tuscan coast. The ship sparked controversy within the burgeoning world of environmental activism that was growing up at the time and revealed just how much waste is regularly dumped on developing countries – a practice many such organizations have long condemned.
The Illicit Waste Trade
According to the Financial Action Task Force, a leading watchdog on illegal trade, just the management of illicit waste brings in nine billion to 11 billion euros annually into the global waste management trade itself. The World Bank believes that the annual production of waste in light of available estimates already lies at around 2 billion tonnes and may increase even further within the next thirty years to 3.4 billion tonnes.
A part of this is called hazardous waste, with regulations that define it as things like chemicals that can be a physical danger to people or animals due to their chemical reactivity and toxicity levels. This led to the Basel Convention signed in 1989, under which countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) promised not to export waste to non-OECD states. Albania — which is not a member of the Paris-based economic forum and is, instead, intentionally shipping waste across borders.
Conclusion
The high-seas governance crisis of hazardous waste smuggling from Albania to Thailand flags the pressing demand for improved regulation and monitoring of global waste trade. However, there are still risks to toxic and dangerous waste which may be handled in an improper or even illegal manner when waste management is outsourced to developing countries. In an increasingly wasteful world, it is evident that a sustainable waste management strategy must be adopted to preserve the environment and human health.
