The Toxic Ship

"In 1984, a ship carrying 14,000 tons of garbage from Philadelphia was refused entry by the state of New Jersey. This launched a year-and-half voyage of roaming the world's oceans in search for a dumping ground, as the cargo of "the world's most unwanted garbage" was rejected by country after country. The ship illegally dumped 4,000 tons of waste in Haiti under false pretenses, and eventually the waste's entire cargo "disappeared" and was illegally dumped in the ocean. It is a story involving subterfuge in cloaking the identity and movements of the ship, visits to many continents, many smaller countries that pushed back on the US trying to use them as a dumping ground, and eventual criminal convictions for the ship owners. Simone Mèuller uses this infamous voyage as lens to better understand the structures and dynamics of the international trade in hazardous waste from the 1970s onwards"--