Immediate Release : Feb.10, 2002
Environmentalists say Canada should not ship toxic wastes to developing countries even for recycling.
Two BC environmental organizations will ask the Federal Government to stop exports of Canadian hazardous wastes to developing countries. SPEC and the Mayne Island Recycling Society (MIRS) will raise the issue at an Environment Canada consultation on hazardous waste regulations scheduled for 9 a.m. on February 11 at the Delta Pinnacle Hotel, 1128 W Hastings St, Vancouver.
The federal government wants to allow Canadian companies to ship toxic waste to developing countries as long as those products are defined as recyclable.
"But what does 'recyclable' mean?" asks Ann Johnston of MIRS. "What passes for recycling in China would be completely unacceptable in Canada. Mountains of shattered computers, each containing up several kgs. of lead, get heaped along irrigation ditches. Some Chinese villages now bring their drinking water in by truck because of the impacts of 'recycling' computers from Canada."
Johnston notes that last October a CBC Marketplace program revealed that Canadian e-waste (computers and electronic equipment containing lead, chromium, cadmium, brominated fire retardants and other hazardous substances) is being shipped to Pakistan and China for "recycling."
Uncontrolled shipments of toxic waste in the 1980s gave rise to the 1989 Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Other Materials.
"Canada ratified the Basel Convention a decade ago -- and we should not be trying to wiggle out of it now by setting up rules that legitimize toxic trading between unequal partners," said SPEC vice-president Helen Spiegelman.
"There is a deep split within the countries that are parties to the Basel Convention," explained Spiegelman, who attended the December 2002 meeting of the Basel Convention Parties in Geneva. "The European Union and many developing countries believe that toxic exports from rich to poor countries violate the spirit of the Convention."
In 1995, these countries pressed successfully for adoption of an Amendment to the Convention that would prevent developed countries from shipping hazardous wastes to undeveloped ones.
Spiegelman supports the ban on shipment of hazardous products from rich to poor countries and thinks Canadian citizens would also support it. "Not only will a ban protect developing countries from pressure to provide services for which they are not equipped, but more importantly it will pressure Canadian industry to avoid producing the waste in the first place."
The Basel Amendment recognizes that "transboundary movements of hazardous wastes, especially to developing countries, have a high risk of not constituting an environmentally sound management of hazardous wastes as required by this Convention."
-30-
Information: Helen Spiegelman SPEC 604 736-7732, 604 731-8464 Ann Johnston MIRS 250 539-2888