NEW YORK -- Borden Chemicals and Plastics, a limited partnership affiliated with the dairy products conglomerate, on February 18 ordered a shipment of toxic mercury waste returned from South Africa to the Louisiana plant where it was generated, following exposure of the scheme by Greenpeace.

In a letter, W. Bailey Barton, a vice president of Borden Inc in Columbus, Ohio, said Greenpeace “raises issues of health effects [Borden] takes very seriously. We intend to investigate your charges immediately, including revisiting the [South African] facility as soon as practicable. In the meantime, we are ordering the recall of the depleted catalyst now en route ... and discontinuing further shipments.”

The reversal came two days after Greenpeace alerted the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and US Customs that 160 barrels of spent mercuric chloride were due to arrive in Durban on February 21. The wastes, banned from US land fills, were headed for Thor Chemicals, a South African “recycling” firm whose poor environmental record and ill treatment of black workers has received international criticism.

“This is a victory for international environmental justice, but only a partial one”, said Kenny Bruno of Greenpeace's toxic trade campaign. “Now Borden should sever all ties to Thor and recall all of its waste stockpiled in South Africa.”

Bruno said responsibility for stopping such practices goes beyond Borden: “President Clinton should hear a very strong message that the international community has no tolerance for dumping waste on Third World countries. He must put an end to this deadly and unjust trade in poisons, even when it occurs in the name of 'recycling'.”

According to sources in South Africa, Thor is stockpiling over 4 million pounds of mercury wastes. In 1991, authorities in Louisiana said Borden's used catalyst was a hazardous waste and could not be exported, but Borden won an appeal on grounds that the waste was being “recycled” -- a claim contradicted by the stockpiles at Thor.

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