Waste in nature is the food for something else. The Chinese are not silly enough to take western waste and bury it in land with such a large population to accommodate. They can get what we call garbage, extract the raw product, and re use it. In effect the west is not only supplying them with raw product but paying them to take it. India is doing the same thing with computer parts. The problem may be the motive. They are not recycling for the sake of the environment, but for reduced cost. If one of the byproducts of the recycling is detrimental there is little concern. The first example that sticks in my mind, is the use of cyanide to recover gold from motherboards in India, and associated h...

Waste in nature is the food for something else. The Chinese are not silly enough to take western waste and bury it in land with such a large population to accommodate. They can get what we call garbage, extract the raw product, and re use it. In effect the west is not only supplying them with raw product but paying them to take it. India is doing the same thing with computer parts. The problem may be the motive. They are not recycling for the sake of the environment, but for reduced cost. If one of the byproducts of the recycling is detrimental there is little concern. The first example that sticks in my mind, is the use of cyanide to recover gold from motherboards in India, and associated heavy metal poisoning of the workers, and surrounding population. There is a lot of talk of recycling waste as it is. We need to go further back and consider the design of products, and all processes to to be consistent with recycling. If something is difficult to recycled, efforts should be made to find that isn't.
The most serious threat, while we as yet are unaware of the consequences, are the volumes of persistent organic pollutants, (P.O.P's)being dumped. Things like Dioxin and PolyChlorinatedBiphenyls are most publicized but cannot be broken down by any natural organic process, because they were designed recently by us.
Some kinds of waste can make anything that is generated creating them more trouble or more dangerous than they are worth. The worst thing we could do is say we shouldn't bother changing because it won't make it better. I may take a while, but people are being shown clearly that so much of this is through things we don't want. Everything should be wanted somewhere or removed from the equation.