The members of the Senate Climate Change standing committee were told that the UK, Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia were sending huge quantities of solid waste to Pakistan, including hazardous waste and e-waste. This was stated by the Climate Change Ministry’s Senior Joint Secretary while briefing the members. The Committee was also told that 624 containers of waste were dumped on the coast in 2019 and the private party who had imported the waste could not be traced.
Country is facing a part of a global problem. Advances in technology have meant that more solid waste is generated than ever before and by advanced countries. These countries have the problem of dealing with the waste. (As do oil exporting Third World countries.) The solution is to send the waste to the Third World, where recyclers (scavengers) will pick over it, extract what is useful, and dispose of the rest. Pakistan seems to be only at an initial phase while other Third World countries have been through the experience. The real problem is the disposal of the waste left over after the minute quantities of gold, copper and aluminium are extracted from the waste, especially e-waste.
Apart from learning from other countries which have gone through this experience, Pakistan must realize that acting as a dumping-ground merely encourages the kind of behaviour that generated that waste. The waste should be handled by the society that generated it, not merely dump the problem somewhere else. The pity is that the more intractable waste will end up in the air if its burnt, or in the ocean, if it is thrown there. As such ‘exported’ waste usually contains a high proportion of bio-undegradable plastic, the country concerned will end up carrying the can for causing the air pollution, and the pollution of the seas. This means that Pakistan must get out of this particular form of paying for First-World mistakes, and should refuse to be a dumping-ground any longer.
