Ship graveyards and e-waste hubs complicate the dumping-ground label A ship can spend thirty years carrying goods between ports before making its final voyage towards a beach. At Alang on the Gulf of Cambay, vessels are driven onto tidal mudflats and cut apart. Elsewhere in India, circuit boards are broken down for the metals inside them. The objects differ in scale. Their disposal raises a shared question about the people left to carry the cost after their useful life ends.

From Delhi’s garbage mountains to the shopping habits that sustain a disposable economy A ₹200 top feels like a small reward. It fits the trend and will look good in the photos. The buyer seldom pauses to imagine its destination after the last wear. Elsewhere in Delhi, waste rises above the rooftops at Ghazipur. Between the market stall and the garbage mountain lies a chain of decisions we seldom follow. Even a shopper who cares about the planet can lose sight of it. The Moun

For years, a recycling bin in one country could lead to a sorting plant in another. China bought discarded plastic as industrial feedstock, and exporters grew accustomed to a vast overseas market. Then China changed the conditions. The shock exposed how much of the world’s recycling trade relied on one country’s willingness to accept mixed material. On 18 July 2017, China notified the World Trade Organization that it intended to prohibit imports of 24 categories of solid wast

Waste Colonialism Has a Price The economics of plastic, electronics and secondhand clothing The trouble with waste trade is visible in the price of a bale, a container or a shipment. A buyer pays for what might be recovered from it. The price rarely tells us who will collect what remains, who will breathe the smoke if it burns, or who will pay to clean a polluted site. To understand waste colonialism, follow the revenue and the costs separately. International trade in discard

A phone reaches the end of its life in one country. A secondhand shirt loses its appeal. A plastic container goes into a recycling bin. Each object seems to have left its owner’s story. In reality, another story has begun, often in a place far from the person who discarded it. Waste colonialism is a name for the unequal movement of unwanted material and its costs. The phrase draws attention to a recurring pattern in which wealthier economies generate large volumes of waste, w