The environmental groups the Mineral Policy Institute, Greenpeace, Basel Action Network (BAN), Earthlife and GroundWork have learned that Australia has exported hazardous wastes to South Africa in defiance of a global ban against such exports.
The Basel Convention banning toxic waste trade was agreed to by 65 governments, including Australia, in 1994. It forbids the export of hazardous wastes for any reason from Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development member states to non-OECD countries. Australia, an OECD member, and South Africa, not a member, are obliged to honour the decisions of the convention.
It has been confirmed by Australian government authority Geoff Thompson and South Africa's minister of environment Valli Moosa that, despite knowing that the waste was regulated under the Basel Convention, their governments authorised the export and import of 60 tonnes of "paragoethite" containing high levels of lead and arsenic. The waste came from the mining and smelting giant Pasminco to the South African firm Mintek. "To our knowledge this is the first time that a country has purposefully defied the global ban", said Jim Puckett of Seattle BAN, a global watchdog group on toxic trade issues.
Pasminco used to dump a very similar waste which it called "jarosite" into the sea before it was forbidden. Now it is looking for new destinations for the toxic residues from its zinc smelting operations in Tasmania.
Australia justified the shipment by saying that the waste was being exported for research reasons and that the residues from the research process would be re-exported to Australia. But the environmentalists in South Africa and Australia denounced this "good bandit" approach.
For more information, contact Simon Divecha at the Mineral Policy Institute in Sydney, phone (02) 9387 5540 or email <advocacy@mpi.org.au>.