Illustration: Andy Carter

What if…

What if we dealt with our own rubbish instead of sending it abroad, Vanessa Baird suggests.

Buy this magazine

NI 528 - A caring economy - November, 2020
Illustration: Emma Peer

Reasons to be cheerful

Arctic is a no-go zone, says Goldman Sachs; SÍ, se puede!; Plastics giant punished.

Buy this magazine

NI 524 - How we make poverty - March, 2020
View from India

View from India

The invisible green warriors by Nilanjana Bhowmick.

Buy this magazine

NI 523 - Borders - Freedom to move, for everyone - January, 2020
Left: Rumani, a Coptic Zabaleen, pulls his cart full of garbage outside his home in Manshiyat Naser (or Garbage City) in Cairo.Photo: Marco Bulgarelli/Gamma-Rapho via Getty

Pick of the heap

Attempts to solve Cairo’s garbage problems come up against a community whose livelihoods depend on refuse. Hisham Allam reports.

Buy this magazine

NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
A river of bin bags snakes down the road  in Jdeideh, Beirut, at the height of the rubbish crisis in February 2016.Photo: Hasan Shaaban/Reuters

Fighting the big burn

The mismanagement of Lebanon’s trash has brought citizens onto the streets – and the latest plans are also stoking outrage. But, as Fiona Broom discovers, there are also optimists.

Buy this magazine

NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
Unsaleable fruit at the wholesale food market of Rungis, Paris, gets sorted so that what is still usable can go to food banks.Photo: Martin BUREAU/AFP/Getty

When it is illegal to waste food

By supermarkets, that is. Timothy Baster and Isabelle Merminod on the progress of a much-lauded French law.

Buy this magazine

NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
A young girl stands defiantly amid the Agbogbloshie dump’s burning fields near Accra – clouds of toxic smoke rising behind her. From dusk until dawn, workers – usually young, male migrants from Ghana’s northern Tamale region – burn automobile parts and electronic waste in order to reveal their copper components in exchange for money for food. According to the Seattle-based NGO, Basel Action Network, millions of tonnes of e-waste from industrialized nations are ‘processed’ at Agbogbloshie each year.Photo: Benjamin Lowy/Getty

Dirty work

Around the world, 15 million people – including children – have little choice but to earn a living from the waste polluting their surroundings. They often work in dangerous conditions, risking their health, sometimes their lives; and are usually relegated to the bottom of the social pecking order, struggling to improve their working conditions.

Buy this magazine

NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
the packaging industry is not taking responsibility waste is not just an issue for the individual

It’s all down to you

Dinyar Godrej explains why the packing industry loves shunting the blame on individual consumers.

Buy this magazine

NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
The face of plastic recycling that China wants to change. A worker sorts plastic in Dong Xiao Kou, a 'scrap village' on the outskirts of Beijing where poor migrant families survive from recycling rubbish.Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty

No more of your junk

Last year, China announced a ban on imports of ‘foreign garbage’. The result? Western stockpiles of used paper and plastic have reached crisis proportions. Adam Liebman on why we need a less rosy notion of what actually happens to our recycling.

Buy this magazine

NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
Waste - The Facts

Waste - The Facts

How much; disposal; food; plastic; electronic waste; the facts and figures.

Buy this magazine

NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
Like a scene from a blockbuster epic on trash: people search for pickings in the Indonesian capital Jakarta's Bantar Gebang dump. Over 60 per cent of the waste is organic and could be composted, but there is no large-scale sorting of refuse, making it much harder to manage.Photo: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty

Modern life is rubbish

The dirt on waste. Dinyar Godrej argues that the problems with our throwaway society add up to much more than the sum of individual actions.

Read this article

NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
Arvind Gupta in his lab.Photo: Ashok Rupner

Toys from trash

Simple models by India’s ‘science magician’, Arvind Gupta, are making learning fun for young minds around the world. Priti Salian reports from a classroom in Bangalore.

Read this article

NI 508 - Clampdown! Criminalizing dissent - December, 2017
Raise your glass to a sustainable pint

Raise your glass to a sustainable pint

Libby Powell investigates the making of Green Beer.

Read this article

NI 451 - Adapt or die - April, 2012

Articles in this category displayed as a table:

Article title From magazine Publication date
A caring economy November, 2020
How we make poverty March, 2020
Borders - Freedom to move, for everyone January, 2020
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The dirt on waste November, 2018
Clampdown! Criminalizing dissent December, 2017
Adapt or die April, 2012
Back