Environmental dumping

Environmental harmful product dumping (“environmental dumping”) is the practice of transfrontier shipment of waste (household waste, industrial/nuclear waste, etc.) from one country to another. The goal is to take the waste to a country that has less strict environmental laws, or environmental laws that are not strictly enforced. The economic benefit of this practice is cheap disposal or recycling of waste without the economic regulations of the original country.

This historical dumping of hazardous waste was possible because less-developed countries did not always: 1) know what was being imported, 2) know what the hazards and trade-offs were, 3) have the enforcement structure in place to apprehend and halt imports, or 4) possess the political consensus and necessary independence to look out for their own national interests.^[1]

With the industrialization and globalization of China and other developing countries, environmental dumping can involve both developing and developed countries as origin and destination.^[1] Now, environmental harmful product dumping is analogous to economically harmful price dumping controlled under the World Trade Organization (WTO) which  occurs when goods and services are sold in the importing country at prices below the selling price and/or cost of production in the country of export.^[2]

An example of an attempt at environmental dumping is the story of the decommissioned French aircraft carrier, the FS Clemenceau, which was originally sold to a ship breaking yard in Gujarat India to be demolished and recycled as scrap.^[3] The Indian Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that it could not enter Indian waters due to the high level of toxic waste and 700 tons of asbestos present on the ship, forcing the French government to take the Clemenceau back. The ship was subsequently blocked from entering the Suez Canal for the same reason. In 2009, the task of recycling the vessel was ultimately taken over by specialist recyclers at Hartlepool in the United Kingdom.^[4]