When disposal is tightly regulated in one place and barely regulated in another, the price gap itself becomes a business. Getting rid of asbestos might cost about $1,000 a ton at home and around $2 a ton shipped to a country with no rules, so waste flows toward the weakest laws.
Poor, indebted countries hungry for any industry or cash will agree to import waste, because the payments can dwarf their normal income. One offer was reported as equal to about 35 years of a country's yearly exports.
Rich countries can meet their recycling targets on paper by shipping waste abroad and counting it as recycled, even though nobody tracks what really happens to it. Nations that pride themselves on being green send plastic to poorer countries whose own waste systems are already failing. Less than 10% of all plastic ever thrown away has even entered a recycling process.
Moving trash across borders works like a smuggling market, with brokers, bribes and cover-ups, except that it flows from rich to poor and the supply never runs out. Even with a treaty that bans shipping toxic waste from rich to poor countries, the profits invite organized crime to take over the routes.
Modern plastics and electronics are packed with poorly regulated additives, contaminants and flame retardants, and breaking them down in poor countries releases those toxins into local air, soil and water. The work is often done by hand, by burning or tearing things apart for a few cents an hour, and workers are sometimes killed doing it.