Haha, the trash issue actually did help my consumption. I didn't have much of a choice at the time, so I lived like I was camping and did manage to keep my trash down to almost nothing. I had a laptop, clothes and some gadgets. Many drinks come in bottles which really do get re-used. I can get meat and veggies at the market with no packaging. Certainly, burning trash isn't good for the environment though.

As for cheap trash, I don't do research into that. It's not expensive to get rid of trash, but it must come with significant enough expenses that it can be shipped via container to another country. Though maybe we're not using the correct terms. This article is talking about clothes. The origin countries may have logistical difficulties with certain types of things which would otherwise go into a landfill. Throw one shirt into the landfill? Fine. Bring dump-trucks of clothes? Maybe now we have a problem. Same for E-waste (also an issue here in the form of used computers which are barely usable.) I could see shipping this stuff overseas as taking a major problem off someone's hands. I imagine it's massively expensive to clean up for plants which deal with large volumes of the worst chemicals, but they deal with high enough margins to pay for the clean-up and some things you can't pawn off on someone else without moving industries (exporting waste and pollution creating manufacturing to China.)

ETA: Recyclable materials is another "trash-like" item which gets shipped. I believe China has since blocked this?