ABSTRACT
Having presented the driving forces critical to the commission of environmental crime in Chapter 5, the discussion now focuses on the approaches used by environmental offenders to commit these crimes and utilizes the routine activity theory as the basis of discussion. The routine activity theory is that each criminal act requires the intersection of three elements: motivated offenders, suitable targets, and the absence of capable guardians that could prevent the offender from committing the act. This chapter presents numerous illustrations of the application of this theory in the dispersal of waste on land and in water and dispersal of pollution in the air, and the lack of guardians capable of, or willing to, protect the environment. A case study illustrates a type of water dispersal that occurs by ship breaking, the demolition of ships that contain waste products.
