Industrial Waste - Essay Example

Academia Research 23 April 2007 Industrial Waste A powerful economic equation drives the global trade in poisons: mounting piles of hazardous waste, a shrinking supply of disposal sites and exorbitant profits for people who can get rid of it legally or illegally. Blocked by increasing government regulation and local opposition to disposal sites, the stream of waste constantly searches for new outlets. One ad in the International Herald Tribune put the matter explicitly: "Thinking about making money Hazardous toxic waste a billion dollar -a- year business. No experience necessary. No equipment necessary. No educational requirements. Think of your financial future and call now for exciting details" (Moyers, 1990). Both criminals and legitimate entrepreneurs sense handsome profits from this excess of hazardous waste, from steering a flow of harmful substances along the path of least resistance toward what they hope will be a final resting place. "I'd slash my wrists if I didn't think that there is enough greed in the world to find someone to take Philadelphia's trash," said one official of that city (Perks, 1986). All too often, however, the waste ends up in poor communities, migrating within the United States from the industrial Northeast to the more rural South; or in Great Britain, from England to Wales. Similarly, on the world stage, hazardous waste from the industrialised nations frequently has a one-way ticket to the developing world. Some Africans have even equated the traffic in toxic waste to the slave trade, although the direction has been reversed: the toxic substances that the industrialised world wishes to discard now flow to the developing world. More than 3 million tons of wastes were shipped from the industrialised world to less-developed nations between 1986 and 1988, according to the environmental organisation Greenpeace (Portney, 1991). Sometimes the deals were made with the approval of governments, sometimes not. The amounts of money to be earned from waste imports were so large that despite the health and environmental risks, some impoverished nations felt they could not refuse to enter this trade. The West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, for example, hoped to make $120 million a year, more than its total annual budget, by agreeing to store industrial wastes from other countries, until public protest over the hazards involved forced the government to back out. A series of odysseys in the late 1980s first drew worldwide attention to the issue of waste exports. Ships laden with hazardous wastes were refused admittance by country after country and, with their cargoes of poison still aboard, sent back to roam the seas. The gravest danger to less developed countries, however, stems not from vagabond ships carrying deadly cargo, but from the legal, routine shipments of "recyclable" wastes: mercury residue, lead-acid batteries, and other refuse from which valuable materials are extracted by low-paid Third World laborers and then reprocessed or sold for reuse. This extraction often takes place in plants filled with choking fumes and lead dust, where workplace safety rules and enforcement are far less stringent than those in the First World. Both the workers and the people living near these factories are threatened as a consequence of this legal recycling trade. According to industry estimates, at least 70 million automobile batteries were discarded in the United States each year during the 1990s, a figure that translates to roughly 70 million gallons of sulfuric acid and more than a billion pounds of lead. Although the United States has one of the world's safest and most sophisticated systems for recycling its used batteries, anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of them end up dumped unceremoniously by the side of a road, thrown away with the regular garbage or just left in a garage and forgotten. Of the 80 percent or more that are recycled, a substantial number are sent overseas, where they are smashed apart, melted down in lead smelters like those in Brazil and poured into ingots for reuse (Portney, 1991). Although environmentalists and Third World leaders have urged a complete ban on exports of hazardous waste, the response has not been encouraging. Hopes rose briefly in March 1989, when 117 nations sent representatives to Basel, Switzerland, to hammer out a treaty on the export of toxic waste (Portney, 1991). There, in a convention center decorated with abstract paintings that one observer described as "looking curiously like leaking barrels of waste," the delegates, some in business suits and others in tribal dress, argued heatedly over what should be done about the global waste trade. Outside, Swiss students and environmentalists dressed in the white space suits of a toxic waste clean-up crew rolled metal drums down the cobblestone streets to protest waste exports. While all the African states and most Third World nations wanted an absolute ban on waste exports, the industrialised nations refused. The United States blocked any proposals for comprehensive regulation, such as requirements that exporting nations punish illegal waste exporters and take back wastes that could not be properly disposed of in the recipient country. The main achievement of the Basel Convention, as the treaty is called, is that waste exporters must now notify and receive permission from waste importers before any shipment may proceed. The treaty also calls for signing nations to accurately label all international waste shipments, to prohibit waste shipments to nations that have banned them-and to try to reduce such exports to a minimum. It does not address waste exports intended for recycling. While some signing nations hailed the treaty as a step forward, the African states and others protested that the agreement legalised a harmful practice. They worried that the less-developed nations have no mechanisms to enforce the provisions and therefore remain at the mercy of the First World. U.S. opposition doomed perhaps the most significant proposal: that no nation ship waste to a country with standards for waste disposal lower than its own. Environmental groups were equally distressed. Outside the Basel convention center, just before the final vote, Greenpeace Switzerland hung a bright yellow banner decorated with the words "Basel Convention Legalises Toxic Terrorism" (Portney, 1991) Reference Perks H. (1986), "Streets Commissioner of Philadelphia, quoted in Philadelphia Inquirer", 9 June. Moyers B.D. (1990), "Global Dumping Ground: The International Traffic in Hazardous Waste", Washington, DC: Seven Locks Press. Portney K.E. (1991), "Siting Hazardous Waste Treatment Facilities: The Nimby Syndrome", New York: Auburn House. Read More