Another problem that was taken advantage of by “Toxic Traders” in the 1970’s and 1980’s is that some spent catalysts have a negative value, i.e. the costs of transportation and recycling outweigh the value of the recovered materials. “Toxic Traders” latched onto this and decided to charge waste generators to take away their spent catalyst for 'recycling', but instead of sending it for recycling they just dumped it in third world countries that did not have any way of cleaning up the toxic threat. People in third world countries were literally living next to mountains of toxic hazardous waste in old rusting drums, which, when leaked, would poison their soil and water supplies while the “Toxic Traders” experienced rapid increases in their already huge profits.