Australia a leading trader in toxic waste

By Pip Hinman

Investigations by Greenpeace and Indian environmental group Srishti have revealed that, in the last two years, Australia has exported 9034 tonnes of toxic waste to India. This makes Australia the second highest exporter of toxic zinc and lead ashes to India, after the USA, and may breach of the Basel Convention.

Greenpeace campaigner Phyllis Campbell criticised the Australian government for trading hazardous waste with non-OECD countries in Asia. Last year, parties to the Basel Convention, including Australia, agreed to ban all exports of hazardous wastes from OECD to non-OECD countries. Although the ban is not officially due for implementation until 1998, Greenpeace has urged that it be enforced immediately.

The Indian government claims that it is keeping a tight rein on the import of hazardous wastes in line with the convention. However, customs data obtained by Greenpeace show that international waste traders, such as Australia, were able to export hazardous waste to India without restraint.

Campbell said that Australia is exporting hazardous waste to non-OECD countries because of the high cost of disposing of the waste in an environmentally responsible manner here. Australia "takes the view that it is easier to degrade the environments of developing nations than find alternative domestic solutions to the problems of toxic wastes", she said.

Highlighting the disposal problems that nevertheless continue in this country, Greenpeace returned four drums of polluted water to ICI headquarters in Melbourne on July 19. The water, transported from Homebush Bay in Sydney, was contaminated by hormone-disrupting chemicals from ICI's Rhodes Island plant. Drums were also collected from Penhryn Estuary in Botany Bay, where toxic chemicals such as mercury and chlorinated hydrocarbons are feared to be leaking from contaminated ground water under the ICI Botany site.

Toxics campaign coordinator Matt Ruchel said "Greenpeace is putting ICI on notice that chemical pollution of the environment must be eliminated and historical pollution must be completely cleaned up by ICI".

From GLW issue 240