In a new report on the underground global scourge that conservative estimates say generates up to $18 billion in illicit profits annually, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) highlighted that all regions of the world have been drawn in, although little data is available outside Europe.
Globally, legal waste management was worth $1.2 trillion in 2024, up from $410 billion in 2011.
“This is not an abstract challenge, but one with severe consequences for public health, as it drives toxic pollution of drinking water, the ocean, soil and more,” said Candice Welsch, Director of Policy Analysis and Public Affairs at UNODC, which noted that corporate involvement in waste crime and trafficking is common.
“Some companies do not comply with regulations, others knowingly acquire illegal services and still others have parallel illegal operations,” the agency said, adding that the least valuable or most difficult waste to dispose of, flows from wealthy regions to poorer regions.
And while electronic or e-waste is considered one of the fastest growing sources of trash worldwide, 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
Only around one-fifth of e-waste is managed in an environmentally sound way, according to 2022 data.
This means that out of a possible $91 billion that could have been reclaimed from the raw materials used (iron, copper and gold, among others), illegal traffickers swiped $28 billion, making it a major obstacle to economic sustainability and sustainable development.
In addition, the illegal waste trade causes ecosystem damage, health risks and inequality in destination countries lacking environmentally-sound waste management, while undermining governance, fuelling corruption and supporting organized crime.
Shopping around
“Most [organized crime groups] seem highly knowledgeable about legislation and regulations, with waste trafficking requiring a high level of expertise”, the UN report’s authors said, meaning that they “jurisdiction shop” for those places with the weakest regulations and lightest penalties.
The UN study also highlighted “sophisticated logistics” put in place to coordinate the various steps of the criminal activity, “including waste collection, export, import and delivery and disposal”, often by different operators in different countries.
Waste traffickers are active at a local level and in large-scale intercontinental trafficking, whose operations involve “legitimate companies with decentralised networks and chains of individual actors”, UNODC said, citing INTERPOL investigations.
Once set up with legal front companies, criminal gangs carry out their illegal activities, “such as pouring liquid waste into streams or lakes”, burning waste to generate energy and mislabelling hazardous waste as safe.
Dumping is another favoured tactic of traffickers who can undercut legal competitors when tendering 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 substantial human and financial resources,” the report’s authors noted, citing EUROPOL.
Two people walk through an e-waste dump in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Price war
In addition to gaps in waste disposal legislation which benefit organized criminal groups, UNODC stressed that limited enforcement capacities, lack of traceability and low penalties also facilitate the work of traffickers across the world.
The impact is being detected in the European Union, where there’s growing demand for illegal waste disposal sparked by stricter regulations and increasing costs of legal disposal. UNODC also points out that the illegal extraction of raw materials from waste has become a lucrative business in Europe, where “the fines imposed have been lower than the profits that can be earned from a single illegal e-waste shipment”.
Patchy enforcement of existing regulations impacts developing countries that process shipments of illegal waste too, the UN agency stressed, highlighting the numerous informal waste pickers “working on landfills, who can suffer various negative health impacts”.
