I’m also not a subject matter expert, but did spend a couple of years working with an academic spinoff monitoring illegal dumping, so here’s my two cents. Happy to discuss further with anyone interested in researching or acting in the sector, and may get around to writing a longer post if there’s interest
Waste mismanagement can have a significant quantifiable negative impact on global health. e.g illegal dumping in a subregion of Campania, Italy was associated with significant increases in cancers in that triangle. Proving causality is much harder than for many other health issues, which may lead to neglect.
Worse waste management probably has greater health impact in LMI countries with much weaker regulations and worse access to healthcare. This includes impact of waste exported from developed countries (e-waste etc.)
Negative impacts on wild animals tend to be much greater than on humans. Plastic waste is estimated to kill 1 million birds annually (mostly at sea, where regulation can’t deal with garbage patches the size of Texas, but cool tech might)
Organised waste disposal—where it exists—is an ongoing and expensive operation typically carried out by profit making companies ($400bn-$2tr global industry). Demand is largely created by governments (through waste disposal regulation as well as paying for household collection), so the the most cost-effective philanthropic interventions may be advocacy.
Waste mismanagement is not just lack of care but also organized criminals (e.g. mafia in Campania) running commercial waste disposal operations as avoiding tax and expense of safe disposal in developed countries is very profitable. In theory tax evasion losses provides economic incentive for govts to tackle the issue (but remediation costs can be higher).
Despite the appeal of the “circular economy”, promoting recycling is likely low impact in DALY/WELLBY terms; trying to identify and block the subset of exported recyclables that are either unsafely recycled or dumped is lightly higher (but NGOs and govts are working on that)
Some theoretically beneficial interventions (e.g waste-to-energy incinerators) are likely net negative in many locations they’re being promoted.
Many of the tractable problems are being tackled by multilateral organizations (it’s one of the EU DG Environment’s highest priorities) and environmental charities down to local cleanup volunteering & NIMBY campaigns). Probably more than people realise because it’s an unfashionable but really big sector
The biggest gap is in LMI countries where the funding and political will isn’t there. Some orgs like WasteAid are working with local authorities and entrepreneurs to try to change this, but I have no idea how effective they are
There are surprisingly high tech solutions, just for the detection, monitoring and tracking of waste (we had space agency funding)
There are also potentially profitable opportunities to do waste disposal (including recycling) in a slightly less harmful way, which might appeal to social enterprise types. If Australia has a problem with lack of recycling, it’s probably a business opportunity.
There are overlaps with existing EA organisations and cause areas (e.g combating the unsafe recycling of lead acid batteries would complement LEEP’s mission)
Great comment, thank you for the info! It seems like there’s many aspects to this issue, some which might be neglected and tractable and some which are really saturated already
I’m also not a subject matter expert, but did spend a couple of years working with an academic spinoff monitoring illegal dumping, so here’s my two cents. Happy to discuss further with anyone interested in researching or acting in the sector, and may get around to writing a longer post if there’s interest
Waste mismanagement can have a significant quantifiable negative impact on global health. e.g illegal dumping in a subregion of Campania, Italy was associated with significant increases in cancers in that triangle. Proving causality is much harder than for many other health issues, which may lead to neglect.
Worse waste management probably has greater health impact in LMI countries with much weaker regulations and worse access to healthcare. This includes impact of waste exported from developed countries (e-waste etc.)
Negative impacts on wild animals tend to be much greater than on humans. Plastic waste is estimated to kill 1 million birds annually (mostly at sea, where regulation can’t deal with garbage patches the size of Texas, but cool tech might)
Organised waste disposal—where it exists—is an ongoing and expensive operation typically carried out by profit making companies ($400bn-$2tr global industry). Demand is largely created by governments (through waste disposal regulation as well as paying for household collection), so the the most cost-effective philanthropic interventions may be advocacy.
Waste mismanagement is not just lack of care but also organized criminals (e.g. mafia in Campania) running commercial waste disposal operations as avoiding tax and expense of safe disposal in developed countries is very profitable. In theory tax evasion losses provides economic incentive for govts to tackle the issue (but remediation costs can be higher).
Despite the appeal of the “circular economy”, promoting recycling is likely low impact in DALY/WELLBY terms; trying to identify and block the subset of exported recyclables that are either unsafely recycled or dumped is lightly higher (but NGOs and govts are working on that)
Some theoretically beneficial interventions (e.g waste-to-energy incinerators) are likely net negative in many locations they’re being promoted.
Many of the tractable problems are being tackled by multilateral organizations (it’s one of the EU DG Environment’s highest priorities) and environmental charities down to local cleanup volunteering & NIMBY campaigns). Probably more than people realise because it’s an unfashionable but really big sector
The biggest gap is in LMI countries where the funding and political will isn’t there. Some orgs like WasteAid are working with local authorities and entrepreneurs to try to change this, but I have no idea how effective they are
There are surprisingly high tech solutions, just for the detection, monitoring and tracking of waste (we had space agency funding)
There are also potentially profitable opportunities to do waste disposal (including recycling) in a slightly less harmful way, which might appeal to social enterprise types. If Australia has a problem with lack of recycling, it’s probably a business opportunity.
There are overlaps with existing EA organisations and cause areas (e.g combating the unsafe recycling of lead acid batteries would complement LEEP’s mission)
Great comment, thank you for the info! It seems like there’s many aspects to this issue, some which might be neglected and tractable and some which are really saturated already
Love the social enterprise idea