“This is not an abstract challenge, but has serious consequences for public health, leading to toxic contamination of drinking water, the ocean, soil, and more.”said Candice Welsch, Director of Policy Analysis and Public Affairs at UNODC, noting that corporate involvement in crime and waste trafficking is common.
“Some companies do not comply with regulations, others knowingly purchase illegal services, and others have parallel illegal operations,” the agency said, adding that less valuable or more difficult to dispose of waste flows from richer regions to poorer regions.
And while e-waste is considered one of the fastest-growing sources of waste, other mass-produced items, such as solar panels, have already been identified as “susceptible to exploitation by organized crime groups,” the UN agency noted.
Barrier to development
According to 2022 data, only about a fifth of e-waste is managed in an environmentally sound manner. This means that of the possible $91 billion that could have been recovered from the raw materials used (iron, copper and gold, among others), $28 billion was stolen by illegal traffickers, making it a major obstacle to economic sustainability and sustainable development.
Furthermore, the illegal waste trade causes ecosystem damage, health risks and inequality in destination countries that lack environmentally sound waste management, while undermining governance, fueling corruption and supporting organized crime.
Shopping
“Most (organized crime groups) appear to have a strong knowledge of legislation and regulations, and waste trafficking requires a high level of expertise,” the authors of the UN report said, meaning they “seek jurisdictions” in those places with the weakest regulations and lightest penalties.
The UN study also highlighted the “sophisticated logistics” implemented to coordinate the various steps of criminal activity, “including the collection, export, import and delivery and disposal of waste”, often by different operators in different countries.
Waste traffickers operate locally and in large-scale intercontinental trafficking, whose operations involve “legitimate companies with decentralized networks and chains of individual actors,” UNODC said, citing INTERPOL investigations.
Once created with legal front companies, criminal gangs carry out their illegal activities, “such as dumping liquid waste into streams or lakes,” burning waste to generate energy, and mislabeling hazardous waste as safe. Dumping is another favorite tactic of traffickers who can undercut legal competitors when bidding for waste disposal contracts.
“In some cases, waste traffickers control the entire processing cycle, from the country of export to the country of import, and possess significant human and financial resources,” the report’s authors noted, citing EUROPOL.
Price war
In addition to gaps in waste disposal legislation that benefit organized criminal groups, UNODC highlighted that limited law enforcement capabilities, lack of traceability and low penalties also facilitate the work of traffickers around the world.
The impact is being detected in the European Union, where there is a growing demand for illegal waste disposal caused by stricter regulations and rising costs of legal disposal. The UNODC also notes that the illegal extraction of raw materials from waste has become a lucrative business in Europe, where “the fines imposed have been less than the profits that can be obtained from a single illegal shipment of electronic waste.”
Patchy enforcement of existing regulations also affects developing countries that process illegal waste shipments, the UN agency emphasized, highlighting the many informal recyclers “working in landfills, who can suffer various negative health impacts.”