Developing Countries and International Waste Trafficking: The Challenge of Fair and Sustainable Waste Disposal in Society 5.0

The paper highlights the problem of waste disposal related to international waste trafficking.Industrialised countries are trying to dump the large amount of waste they produce as quickly aspossible by exporting it to developing countries. The latter, partly because of their need forcommodities, agree to import hazardous waste, passing it off as second-hand goods. The rules of theBasel Convention on Transboundary Trade in Waste can be easily circumvented by requiring theimporting state to classify the waste as hazardous.Developing countries and some countries in the South have become the dustbins of industrialisedcountries. However, in recent years, starting with the new green policies implemented in China,something is changing and industrialised countries have to deal with huge quantities of waste thatare no longer imported from South-East Asian countries. The routes change, but industrialisedcountries continue to export waste to other developing countries that accept it and in which thesegoods composed of intermediaries, retailers, repairers and second-hand dealers ready to give a newlife to what are in fact not used objects but waste. In addition to clamping down on illegal wastetrafficking, we need to find innovative solutions that ensure a high quality of life and put people atthe centre. In Society 5.0, innovation must be aimed at ensuring sustainability. Society 5.0 isfounded on the principles of cooperation and the circular economy. At present, however, only asmall part of the global economy is circular. In the interests of fair and sustainable disposal, weneed to move from a linear take-make-waste economy to an economy that aims to reduce theamount of waste produced by devising new systems for recovering materials and recycling them atthe end of their life cycle.The paper explores how the circular economy, responding to the ethical and cultural principles ofSociety 5.0, can be useful not only to industrialised countries in reducing the amount of wasteproduced but also to developing countries that can transform the huge landfills in which waste fromindustrialised countries accumulates into centres for recycling waste and transforming it intosecondary commodities.Only in this way can we take care of the environment, implementing circular economy processesthat enable sustainable growth and equity for developing countries.This transition is not easy and this is one of the challenges of Society 5.0.