An overview of waste crime, its characteristics, and the vulnerability of the EU waste sector

Abstract

While waste is increasingly viewed as a resource to be globally traded, increased regulatory control on waste across Europe has created the conditions where waste crime now operates alongside a legitimate waste sector. Waste crime,is an environmental crime and a form of white-collar crime, which exploits the physical characteristics of waste, the complexity of the collection and downstream infrastructure, and the market opportunities for profit. This paper highlights some of the factors which make the waste sector vulnerable to waste crime. These factors include new legislation and its weak regulatory enforcement, the economics of waste treatment, where legal and safe treatment of waste can be more expensive than illegal operations, the complexity of the waste sector and the different actors who can have some involvement, directly or indirectly, in the movement of illegal wastes, and finally that waste can be hidden or disguised and creates an opportunity for illegal businesses to operate alongside legitimate waste operators. The study also considers waste crime from the perspective of particular waste streams that are often associated with illegal shipment or through illegal treatment and disposal. For each, the nature of the crime which occurs is shown to differ, but for each, vulnerabilities to waste crime are evident. The paper also describes some approaches which can be adopted by regulators and those involved in developing new legislation for identifying where opportunities for waste crime occurs and how to prevent it.

Illicit Waste Trafficking and Loopholes in the European and Italian Legislation

“…To evade the law, waste is smuggled through false declarations and documentation, concealment, and other illicit methods, as it will be extensively explained in this paper. The realisation of this variety of activities involves the active participation of multiple actors with different roles (Liddick 2010;Bisschop 2012;Baird, Curry, and Cruz 2014;EnviCrimeNet 2015). The end result is the illicit management and shipment of waste, a phenomenon which detrimentally affects the environment, jeopardises human health, and weakens the legitimate economy.…”

Quantifying the Effect of Macroeconomic and Social Factors on Illegal E-Waste Trade

“…Illegal e-waste dumping or burning falls under the definition of environmental crime (though white collar [2]), in that the waste of electrical and electronic equipment contains hazardous materials [2] that could harm the environment [3,4] and human health [5,6,7]. Impacts are also caused by informal and improper e-waste management [3,4], especially in developing countries [7], as e-waste carries toxic components—such as cadmium, mercury and lead—that make it extremely dangerous [8].…”

“…The main reasons for illegal e-waste trafficking are weak regulatory enforcement, and the fact that it is more costly to locally and legally treat/recycle e-waste than it is for the e-waste to be illegally shipped to specific regions [2,9,10]. In addition, e-waste contains valuable raw materials, such as gold and copper, making the recovery of these substances profitable for developing countries [8].…”

“…Though the EU has regulated these transboundary movements by issuing Directive 2002/96/EC [12], illegal e-waste trafficking has not been limited due to the fact that there is no worldwide legislation. Developed regions (e.g., the EU) are not allowed to export e-waste to non-OECD countries for treatment or disposal, due to the lack or weakness of the aforementioned regulatory enforcement [2]. Though about 70% of all e-waste is shipped to China [10,13], in light of recent regulations adopted in the region, it could be the case that West Africa is to receive larger amounts of e-waste in the coming years [9].…”

How e-Waste Challenges Environmental Governance

“…6 Waste from electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) is one of the major waste streams among these transport violations. Overall, one in five containers exported from the EU contains waste and an estimated 20 per cent of those are in violation of export bans or administrative requirements for waste trading (Baird et al 2014). The data available on the illegal trade in ewaste reflect, however, the control that takes place and are not necessarily an accurate representation of the scale of smuggling (Bisschop 2012).…”