And this stuff all started out in heavy metals deposits, it is already present underground somewhere. The only real question is how serious the effects on humans are with any method of disposal. It isn't at all clear there is a problem as long as it is buried fairly deep and not leeching into the water table.
This waste was dumped. The fact that poor people moved to the dump to make a living scavenging is a secondary phenomenon. Without them it still would have been dumped.
This is a bit of an imaginary solution to the problem, is it not? And there will always be poor_er_ countries, which is the thrust of my point.
The economic incentive does not go away. Not least because it is clearly already cheaper to float it away on a huge boat than bury it where it is used.
One problem is land cost: it's extremely difficult to safely build new houses on top of landfill. But that doesn't explain everything, does it? After all the USA has plenty of room to bury all its consumer waste. Why is it exporting it?
> And this stuff all started out in heavy metals deposits, it is already present underground somewhere.
It does not start out all in one place, though. It starts out in small, dispersed concentrations of heavy metals, and ends up all in a few giant landfills in poorer countries. It's not clear what the risk is, but the lack of clarity doesn't mean there's no risk.
I don't mind if the waste comes to my country. Australia is big and we're wealthy enough that it'll be handled safely. If we were the poorest country on the globe then it'd be a non-issue.