Author: Danielle Renwick
In August 2019, the sprawling Kpone landfill, 25 miles from the center of Accra, Ghana, burst into flames. As the city’s only engineered landfill, Kpone had been collecting cast-off clothing from the United States and other wealthy countries for years. As they soaked up rain, the textiles trapped gases and chemicals that emanated from all that decomposing trash until, one day, the landfill exploded. The ensuing fire burned for eight months, engulfing nearby communities in smoke. “Waste has always been inflicted upon the margins,” said Oliver Franklin-Wallis, author of the new book, Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future. Waste, he writes, is often exported from rich countries to poor ones, a phenomenon known as “toxic colonialism.”