BRUSSELS — Representatives from African and eastern European countries plagued by waste exports from western Europe have urged the European Community to cooperate in ending all hazardous waste exports.
At a press conference on March 20, Greenpeace also presented evidence of the serious consequences of continuing hazardous waste exports to Africa and eastern Europe.
The EC is poised to decide whether to continue to allow the export of hazardous waste to the Third World and eastern Europe. The Lome IV Convention in 1989 banned all hazardous waste exports to 69 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, but the EC is balking at extending this ban to the remaining 75 less industrialised countries because of pressure from industry and free trade interests.
According to Greenpeace, the latest waste shipment regulation proposal from the European Council Presidency is substantially weaker than the proposal earlier rejected by the European Parliament. Indeed, it is considerably weaker than the existing EC directive on the subject.
"The European Community is at a turning point", said Greenpeace's Jim Puckett. "They can legitimise toxic colonialism, or they can reject it."
Greenpeace presented recent evidence of hazardous waste trade for so-called recycling processes in Africa and eastern Europe. A ship carrying shredded car parts and car batteries from Germany was turned away by the Egyptian authorities after a tip-off from the Netherlands. Two attempts to dump hazardous waste from Bavaria in the Ukraine were halted by Polish authorities in February. Another recent scheme involved German toxic metal residues to pave roads and airstrips in the Ukraine. Mercury waste is regularly being shipped from the United Kingdom to South African where it has contaminated a river and has caused chronic mercury poisoning in at least five workers.
Greenpeace Germany discovered hundreds of barrels of outdated paints and solvents in a warehouse near Kassel which were alleged to be used as fuel in Romania for an incinerator which existed only on paper.
"Poland has banned the import of hazardous waste even for recycling processes", said Polish Environment Inspectorate official Wojciech Swiatek. "But it is very difficult to enforce such a ban without cooperation on both sides of the border. Both import and export bans must be introduced. This is what we need from the European Community, not toxic waste."
Chris Albertyn of Earthlife, in South Africa, said, "South Africans have just voted to end apartheid and join the rest of the world. We must not replace political apartheid with environmental apartheid."
"The European Community must choose the moral and environmental high tt. "The issue really is whether hazardous waste producing countries are going to solve their own waste crisis or simply dump it on poorer countries."
[Greenpeace/Pegasus.]