 Reed, Professor of English and American Studies at Washington State University, argues that the correlation between historical colonialism and toxic colonialism is based on perceptions of indigenous land as ‘waste.’ He argues that Western cultures have deemed indigenous land as “underdeveloped” and “empty,” and that the people inhabiting it are therefore less “civilized.” Using the historical premises of colonialism, toxic colonialism reproduces these same arguments by defining Global South land as expendable for Western wastes.Toxic colonialism, defined as the process by which “underdeveloped states are used as inexpensive alternatives for the export or disposal of hazardous waste pollution by developed states,” is the core critique against the global waste trade.Toxic colonialism represents the neocolonial policy which continues to maintain global inequality today through unfair trade systems.