End Plastics
Is Plastic Fueling Modern Day Slavery?
July 30, 2025
At EARTHDAY.ORG, we have been fighting plastic waste to protect the environment and our health. But today, July 30, on World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, it’s worth recognizing another reason to fight: limiting the plastic and trash that ends up in landfills could also limit the exploitation of children and families around the world.
Here’s why: nearly 50 million people are trapped in modern-day slavery, and plastic pollution is helping fuel it. Trafficking occurs when a person is forced, or coerced into performing labor of any sort against their will.
In the global waste management system, there are countless work-force gaps filled by informal labor and in these unregulated spaces there are countless opportunities for traffickers to exploit vulnerable men, women, and children.The global waste trade creates a shadow economy, one that’s poorly regulated, easily exploited, and often run by informal or criminal networks. It’s within these vulnerable aftermarkets that trafficking and exploitation thrive.
What Happens to Our Waste?
When we throw plastic away, we often assume it’s either recycled or responsibly landfilled. But in reality, much of our plastic waste, especially from countries in the Global North, is shipped overseas, often to poorer nations in the Global South. These countries lack the infrastructure to manage this waste safely, and it often ends up in landfills, open dumps, rivers, or illegal recycling operations
Waste picking is a large part of this economy – it’s when people, many of them children, pick through open dumps looking for materials that can be sold to recyclers. These pickers are subjected to extremely dangerous working conditions, including cuts and abrasions from used needles and glass, exposure to toxic chemicals, and disease from rotting foods, among many other things.
Children and migrants who scavenge waste from dumpsites are doing some of the dirtiest and more dangerous work on the planet, often with no protections, no education, and no way out.
This is the perfect setup for traffickers.
These children often live on the fringes of society, meaning they are not in school, living without birth certificates or legal identities and are often socially marginalized because of this. The conditions at these dumpsites in which they live are often overrun with gangs, alcohol, and drug abuse.
While not every case of child waste picking qualifies as trafficking under international law, the conditions these children face such as extreme poverty, lack of protection, and constant exposure to predatory actors make them exceptionally vulnerable to trafficking and other forms of exploitation.
In some cases, families compel children to work in dangerous dumpsites not out of malice, but out of desperation. While this may not legally constitute trafficking, it still places children at enormous risk, particularly when third parties begin to profit off their labor or exploit their isolation. For example, media investigations and international reports have documented that Syrian refugee children in Turkey, unable to attend school due to age restrictions or language barriers, often survive by picking through litter and waste at landfill sites. These informal labor conditions are hazardous and leave children vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and in some cases, trafficking.
Informal waste economies often exist on a spectrum. This ranges from survival labor to outright trafficking. Children may begin picking trash to help their families, but over time, third-party control, debt, abuse, or sexual coercion can escalate their situation. Some may argue that because these children are earning money for their family through sorting through waste that they are actually benefiting from the plastic pollution.
Let’s be clear: They are not. These children are better off in schools. Children forced into waste picking miss out on education, suffer long-term health damage, and face a lifetime of marginalization.
So today, on World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, what can we do? This August, world leaders will meet for the sixth round of negotiations on a legally binding global plastics treaty, known as INC-5.2, which will take place in Switzerland. We can use this moment to urge our governments to support a strong treaty that addresses plastic pollution at its source and limits plastic production. You can make your voice heard by signing our petition here.
EARTHDAY.ORG has been calling for a 60% reduction in plastic production by 2040. This is entirely achievable given that a massive volume of the plastic produced is designed for single use and immediate disposal.
By limiting our production of plastic, and the waste it eventually creates, we can help to dismantle the conditions that lead to trafficking and exploitation. The fight against plastic pollution isn’t just a fight for the environment, or for our health, but for the most vulnerable on our planet – our children.
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