Waste Colonialism

There’s no such thing as “away” - why waste is both a global and a local issue

We see Ref/use Lab as a truly local project which is rooted in hands-on action in the North Lancs community where we’re based. However, everything we do is also very influenced by the global big picture. Why? Because waste is deeply mobile and, when we start following the threads of the items we use everyday right through from their beginnings as raw materials all the way through to their use and eventual disposal, we quickly find ourselves transported into a story that’s MUCH bigger in both space and time than you could ever have imagined. 
 
Our starting point for this realisation was two pieces of research that we commissioned locally in order to better understand how much waste was being produced in our local area and where it was ending up. The first was a dissertation project on textile waste undertaken by Lancaster University student Eve Parr in collaboration with Sewing Cafe Lancaster and the second was a waste stream mapping exercise conducted by community artist, activist and scholar Victoria Frausin to find out more about where waste from North Lancs ends up. 
 
While both pieces of research raised plenty of questions, they also revealed some very clear patterns: many of the items that get used everyday in North Lancs are with us only for a short period of time. We get to enjoy them when they are saleable and in good working order. But a much larger portion of their lives – that is to say, their extraction, manufacture, decline and disposal – takes place elsewhere. 
 
That’s why, in relation to waste in particular, it doesn’t make sense to talk about “throwing stuff away” because, when the bins are collected, those items don’t vanish. Instead, everything goes somewhere – whether that’s incineration or landfill in this country, or, as is often the case, incineration, landfill or dumping abroad where disposal is cheaper.

Why are so many things produced overseas?

There are lots of reasons why the items that we use everyday are both manufactured and disposed of overseas. Some of this is due to geographical variations which mean that certain materials are found in particular places rather than others. For example, cotton needs a rich soil, plenty of sunshine and no frost, which is one reason why the raw materials needed to make your jeans and T-shirt aren’t grown in Lancashire. 
 
However, even if cotton COULD be easily grown in the UK, the bigger fashion brands would still not make your jeans and T shirt here. That’s because, in comparison to many other parts of the world, the UK has relatively tight laws around worker rights and environmental protection. This means that employees have to have safe working conditions and proper pay, and that any industrial processes related to garment production, such as tanning or dyeing, for example, have to include environmental protection processes to ensure that air and water supplies remain relatively unpolluted. Adhering to these standards raises production costs for companies so, to keep profit margins as large as possible, most global brands opt to produce, manufacture and dispose of their products in the Global South where it’s considerably cheaper to operate because standards on worker rights and the environment are lower. 
 
The results of this are some seriously damaging practices that most of us would not want associated with the products that we use on a daily basis. For example:
  • The rising popularity of lightweight gas and electric vehicles has led to an increase in demand for bauxite, the ore needed to produce aluminium. Human rights groups have raised concerns about deforestation, land and water pollution related to bauxite mining in the Amazon with links to the car manufacturer Ford. Illegal mining linked to global supply chains in the Amazon is also forcing indigenous people from their lands.
  • Many of those working in raw materials production suffer serious health issues as a result of exposure to toxic chemicals. Work by the Environmental Justice Foundation highlights the plight of cotton farmers as they work with a crop which accounts for just 2.4% of the world’s cultivated land but uses 6% of the world’s pesticides and 16% of its insecticides. Chronic exposure to pesticides is linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and sterility.
  • The fast fashion industry is associated with sweatshop labour and difficult and dangerous conditions for employees with the most famous example being the Rana Plaza disaster where the collapse of a Bangladeshi clothing factory producing garments for at least 29 global brands killed over 1,000 garment workers. Concerns about the safety of the building had been raised previously but were ignored by managers who ordered workers back to the factory to complete an order.

 

In short, all this means that lots of the items that we get to use and enjoy everyday, including clothing, electricals, bikes and cars, come at the cost of people and environments in other parts of the world. Or, to put it another way, the UK and other richer nations get all the BENEFITS of the item, while the rest of the world gets all the COSTS.

Unfortunately, it’s exactly the same story at the other end of an object’s lifecycle. Due to exactly the same processes as before (lower wages, worker protections and environmental legislation), many objects are returned to the Global South when they are no longer wanted in a process called waste colonialism.

What’s wrong with waste disposal in the UK?

In recent years, waste researchers have identified a worrying trend, which is the increasing tendency to send various UK waste streams abroad for recycling and disposal. For example, the latest figures suggest over 600,000 metric tons of plastics waste was exported from the UK in 2023, an increase of 10 per cent on the previous year. Equally, textiles researchers have revealed that only 10% of the clothes that get donated to charity shops in the UK end up being resold and worn here. Instead, around 70% of all donated clothing gets sent to the Global South, particularly Ghana and Kenya, where it ends up saturating second hand markets and undercutting local garment manufacturers in a process called waste colonialism.
 
The reasons for the growing waste export trend are varied but most come down to politics and economics: factors include reduced demand for recycled materials within UK and European markets due to an oversupply of cheap, brand new items, and increased costs of disposal here due to rapidly filling landfills and relatively strong levels of environmental regulation, all of which make it expensive to recycle and dispose of items in the UK. In contrast, lower wages and environmental standards in the Global South makes these countries a cheaper option for recycling and disposal. 
 
Unfortunately, the lack of protections for workers and the environment makes ‘recycling’ abroad something of a disaster zone. As with recycling here in the UK, many items that are exported are not, ultimately, recyclable due to contamination and an oversaturated market. The result is that the UK’s rubbish is exported, then incinerated, landfilled or dumped on the Global South’s beaches at considerable environmental and human cost. 
 
This is why it’s so important to tell the full story of waste and the linear take, make, discard system that fuels it. Because, yes waste is problematic wherever it happens. But it’s even more problematic when it is tied to a global commodity chain which makes the Global South pay twice for the products that the rest of the world gets to enjoy: once in the process of manufacturing the item under poor conditions and then a second time in the process of disposing of it.
 

Introducing waste colonialism: Why is waste exported overseas?

When you read about the damage done through exporting waste for recycling and disposal, it’s easy to think that the answer is simple: just make sure that all waste gets handled in the UK instead. 
 
This makes complete sense up to a certain point: yes, the UK should absolutely be responsible for dealing with its own waste. However, there are two crucial problems here. Firstly, there’s a tendency to put the focus in the wrong place. By framing this as a waste problem rather than an overproduction problem, we fixate on how to clean up and get rid of waste after the fact. This is much less effective than preventing it in the first place, thanks to the limits to recycling and the amount of waste that’s generated in the production of each new item. 
 
All of which brings us to a second, related problem, which is the promotion of energy from waste as a ‘solution’ to the waste problem. Energy from waste schemes can take different forms, including the recovery of energy during waste disposal by incineration and anaerobic digestion, the process by which organic waste is broken down to generate biogas which can then be used to generate energy. 
 
At first glance, the prospect of generating energy as a by-product of handling waste can seem an attractive solution, not least because declining space – and hence rising costs – makes landfill a less viable option. However, in most cases such schemes cause more problems than they solve: incineration worsens air quality through the release of toxic chemicals and, in a direct reflection of the processes seen in the Global South, incinerators are almost always located in poorer areas. This means that those who are already disadvantaged in the current system bear even more of the negative impacts of this method of waste disposal. 
 
Worse still, while both incineration and anaerobic digestion do generate energy, the amount of energy that is created pales in comparison to the amount of energy and waste that was used to produce the items in the first place. This brings us back to the waste hierarchy and the overwhelming importance of prevention as opposed to recycling or recovery. 
 
And this is perhaps the ultimate problem with investing in technologies designed to recover energy from waste: once these facilities have been built, they require a steady supply of waste in order to keep generating, because financial and energy markets have come to rely upon them. This is how a technology originally designed to solve a waste problem can end up creating a market for MORE waste, not less. This has been seen in relation to anaerobic digestion where financial incentives sometimes make it more profitable for farmers to grow crops to feed into an anaerobic digester rather than to be sold as food. While this might make sense financially, it is an environmental disaster because the amount of energy, water and fertiliser used to grow the crops far outweighs the amount of energy generated from the resulting biogas.
 

Waste in Lancaster District

Have you ever stopped to wonder how much waste is generated in the place where you live, and where it ends up?
 
Here in North Lancashire, the Closing Loops project commissioned local researcher and Ref/use Lab member Victoria Frausin to answer this exact question. The aim of the research was to develop a clearer picture of waste streams locally so that we could start to identify relevant leverage points where communities might be able develop projects to help close resource loops and build a more regenerative economy. 
 
Alongside the research, Victoria also developed a series of workshops to engage local people and get them talking about how things might be different – this website is part of that project.
 
Here are some of the main findings of Victoria’s research:
  • In Lancaster District, the city council is responsible for collecting waste while Lancashire County Council is responsible for processing and dealing with it. Figures from the Waste and Resources Action Programme show that, in 2020/1 the county council dealt with 31,375 tonnes of residual waste and recycled 18,107 tonnes – 10,449 of which was dry recyclables and 7,658 of which was garden waste.
  • In 2024/5, the county’s waste management budget was £77.652 million – the third largest budget area after children’s services and social care.
  • Residual waste from Lancashire residents’ black bins goes to either Whinney Hill landfill through a contract that is set to expire in 2025 or two waste recovery parks, Farington and Thornton, where metals and organic matter are screened out and handled separately. The waste that remains is used as refuse derived fuel for incineration at energy from waste plants. You can read more on the county council’s website here.
  • The county council also handles a large volume of recyclables, which are collected from residents’ kerbside bins every two weeks as well as from recycling centres across the county. A wide variety of materials are collected, including glass, cans, paper, card and plastics. You can read more about where each of these materials goes here.
  • This all sounds like good news – and certainly the county council are doing their best to ensure that as much waste as possible gets recycled, including investing in top of the range sorting equipment for their waste recovery parks. However, when we look at the bigger picture of waste, there are MANY challenges which make it hard to make genuine progress on waste, despite the best efforts of local authorities.

 

Victoria’s research highlighted the following key issues:

  • The above figures do not include commercial and industrial waste, which are dealt with separately by private companies. Getting data on these waste streams is harder due to commercial confidentiality arrangements. However, research shows that much more waste is generated from these sources than from householders.
  • There are limits to what recycling can achieve, particularly for composite products that are not designed to be recycled. A troubling example is the rise in single use vapes causing fires at UK waste and recycling plants as the embedded lithium-ion batteries that they contain ignite easily if broken. Around 1.3 million vapes are thrown away every week in the UK and local authorities and waste management firms are left to pick up the bill when fires occur.
  • There is an urgent need to focus on the prevention and reduction of waste at source rather than just recycling after the fact. Failure to do this has serious consequences for people and the environment, particularly in the Global South.
  • The good news is that there are many alternative approaches emerging in the form of businesses, services and community facilities based around reuse and repair. Some of these, such as the humble milkround, have been with us for years while others are much newer responses to the waste crisis. If you’re in North Lancashire, don’t forget to check out the Refuse Waste Map and Directory, which contains links to a whole range of businesses and community organisations offering repair, reuse and other circular approaches to waste.