By Francesca Davis
The Coalition government is taking steps to remove any remaining limits on industry's ability to pollute and dispose of hazardous wastes, both in and out of Australia. Plans to lower pollution standards, the lack of public access to information on waste disposal and the government's position at the recent Basel Convention confirm this.
From February 23-27, the fourth Basel Waste Trade Convention was held in Kuching, Malaysia. Beforehand, the Australian government had spent much time and energy trying to sabotage a worldwide ban on hazardous waste trade with the developing world.
The Basel ban, which prohibits the export of hazardous waste from developed to developing countries, was adopted by parties to the convention in 1994. It now needs to be ratified.
The overwhelming majority of the world's hazardous waste is produced by developed countries, but for many years has been dumped on the poor communities of the underdeveloped world as a way of avoiding higher disposal costs at home.
For example, Australia has exported zinc ash with hazardous levels of lead and cadmium to India to use in fertiliser despite rejecting these wastes for use in fertilisers here. Australia has been one of India's major sources of zinc ash, exporting 177 tonnes in 1996.
Australia also exports thousands of tonnes of waste to China, Indonesia and the Philippines.
The Basel Convention contains an annex which lists countries whose hazardous waste exports are controlled. These countries can trade waste with each other but not with those not on the annex. Before the convention, Australia, New Zealand and Canada had supported moves to add non-OECD countries to Annex 7, in order to keep dumping on these Third World countries.
Australia had also refused to ratify the ban, but was forced to back down and, along with the other parties, adopted the proposed hazardous waste lists, agreed there would be no additions to Annex 7 until the Basel ban enters into force and reaffirmed a commitment to ratify the Basel ban.
It comes as no surprise then, that the government is now trying to avoid having waste disposal regulated here.
On February 27, the National Environment Protection Council (NEPC) passed the National Pollutant Inventory. Community and environment groups had spent five years campaigning for a system that requires industry to report on its air, land and water emissions.
Similar schemes overseas, particularly in the US, have been attributed with achieving a 40% reduction in pollution and waste, with significant savings to industries through waste reduction and clean production. The US Toxic Release Inventory, for example, gathers data on emissions of 650 pollutants.
Unfortunately, the National Pollutant Inventory (NPI), soon to pass into law, will in no way serve either as a monitoring body or provide the public with information about industry pollution. The NPI requires industry to report only on 36 toxic substances for the first two years, then 54 from the third year onward.
A 1995 trial of the NPI in the Melbourne suburb of Dandenong tracked emissions to air of just 24 pollutants and found that 86,647 tonnes of these chemicals were emitted during the year — 300 kilograms of toxic emissions per person. It was expected that the NPI would adopt a much broader list.
Even more dangerous, the inventory actually excludes the reporting of toxic chemicals dumped into sewers, land fills and tailing dams — all large sources of environmental pollution. This means that industry can dump thousands of tonnes of toxic chemicals without the public knowing.
According to Matt Ruchel from Greenpeace, "Australian governments have left a gaping hole for dirty industries to continue to secretly dump hazardous chemicals". Thanks to the NPI, Australia may soon be a popular place for toxic industries to do business.
Meanwhile, the government appears to be planning to lower national air quality standards in the new National Environment Protection Measure.
Although the draft proposal to be discussed at the NEPC's next meeting has not yet been publicly released, environment groups have already protested that the government is capitulating to industry.
Rejecting advice from experts, the government plans to: weaken standards for ozone and sulphur dioxide emissions; have no standard for very fine particulates (most damaging to human health); and set inadequate requirements for air quality monitoring.