Today’s episode is all about trash.

What if every country had to deal with its own garbage instead of shipping it elsewhere? Did you know what trash is bought and sold on a global market? What would happen if that market was shut down?

Guests:

• Dr. Ifesinachi Okafor-Yarwood — lecturer in sustainable development at the University of St. Andrews.
• Jim Puckett — founder and executive director of the Basel Action Network
• Dr. Jenna Jambeck — professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia
• Dr. Joshua Lepawsky — professor in the department of geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland
• James Wakibia — environmental activist in Kenya
• Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali — vice president for environmental justice, climate and community revitalization at the National Wildlife Federation

Further Reading:

• Waste Trading Among Rich Nations by Kate O’Neill
• Toxic waste dumping in the Global South as a form of environmental racism: Evidence from the Gulf of Guinea
• The Basel Convention
• Bamako Convention: Preventing Africa from becoming a dumping ground for toxic wastes
• In the 1980s, Italy paid a Nigerian town $100 a month to store toxic waste—and it’s happening again
• Where does your plastic go? Global investigation reveals America’s dirty secret
• Long Awaited Global Ban on Exporting Hazardous Waste to Developing Countries Becomes Law Today
• Liberia: EPA Repatriates Four Containers of Hazardous Chemical to Greece, Fines LEC for Pollution
• Trash in America: Moving From Destructive Consumption to a Zero-Waste System
• Great white shark Nukumi, which weighs over 3000 pounds, reaches New Jersey coast
• Trafigura found guilty of exporting toxic waste
• Toxic wastes caused deaths, illnesses in Côte d’Ivoire – UN expert
• Our Tech Addiction Is Creating a ‘Toxic Soup’
• The Global Garbage Economy Begins (and Ends) in This Senegalese Dump
• Humans left behind a record amount of e-waste in 2019
• Municipal versus Industrial Waste: Questioning the 3-97 ratio
• Almost everything you know about e-waste is wrong
• Silicon Valley Is One of the Most Polluted Places in the Country
• Sources and Streams of Electronic Waste
• What E-Waste Journalism Gets Wrong
• The global waste management market size is expected to reach $530.0 billion by 2025 from $330.6 billion in 2017, growing at a CAGR of 6.0% from 2018 to 2025
• China’s Big Recycling Market Is Sagging
• Thailand Passes Strict Ban on the Importation of Electronic Waste
• Plastics Pile Up as China Refuses to Take the West’s Recycling
• The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade
• Big Oil Is in Trouble. Its Plan: Flood Africa With Plastic.
• 7 Things You Didn’t Know About Plastic (and Recycling)
• China’s ban on trash imports shifts waste crisis to Southeast Asia
• 2 Years Ago, Kenya Set The World’s Strictest Plastic Bag Ban. Did It Work?
• Africa’s Exploding Plastic Nightmare
• The Era Of Easy Recycling May Be Coming To An End
• US Continues to Export Plastic Waste to Developing Countries as 2021 International Trade Ban Looms
• Waste Management, Casella announce halt to plastic waste exports to countries with poor waste management
• ‘We’re not a dump’ – poor Alabama towns struggle under the stench of toxic landfills
• Federal Court Still Requires EPA to Enforce Civil Rights
• Emelle residents protest Chemical Waste Management hazardous waste landfill 1978-1995
• Emelle, Alabama: Home Of The Nation’s Largest Hazardous Waste Landfill.
• City archives show how LA banned incinerators to fight smog
• The great garbage fire debate: Should we be burning our trash into energy?
• Trash from Northern Ireland will continue to wash up on our shores for weeks
• Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made
• How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

Episode Sponsors:

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Flash Forward is hosted by Rose Eveleth and produced by Julia Llinas Goodman. The intro music is by Asura and the outtro music is by Hussalonia. The episode art is by Matt Lubchansky. The voices from the future this episode were provided by

If you want to suggest a future we should take on, send us a note on Twitter, Facebook or by email at info@flashforwardpod.com. We love hearing your ideas! And if you think you’ve spotted one of the little references I’ve hidden in the episode, email us there too. If you’re right, I’ll send you something cool.

And if you want to support the show, there are a few ways you can do that too! Head to www.flashforwardpod.com/support for more about how to give. But if that’s not in the cards for you, you can head to iTunes and leave us a nice review or just tell your friends about us. Those things really do help.

That’s all for this future, come back next time and we’ll travel to a new one.