Global waste meeting under way in Bali
Indonesia is hosting a major meeting of waste disposal experts from more than 170 countries, looking at how to handle the mountains of rubbish produced by an increasingly throw-away global society. Broken computers, old mobile phones, toxic chemicals - even used condoms - pose an increasing challenge. As well as how to get rid of legitimate garbage, the Basel Convention meeting in Bali is also looking at illegal waste exporting.
Presenter: Bo Hill
Speakers: Rasio Ridha Sani, assistant minister for hazardous waste and substance management, Indonesia Ministry for the Environment; Sarah Westervelt, e-waste project leader, Basel Action Network
HILL: Across Indonesia’s nearly two million square kilometres are thousands of border entry points - easy targets for illegal activity - from human trafficking to consumer waste dumping. Rasio Ridha Sani, from Indonesia’s environment ministry, says the country is a target for unscrupulous dumpers.
RASIO: Indonesia is I think one of the most vulnerable countries from the impact of illegal transporting and movement of hazardous waste because we are the largest archipelago country in the world.
HILL: Indonesia is one of 170 signatories to the 16-year-old Basel Convention, a UN treaty which makes exporting certain hazardous materials illegal. It requires importing countries to properly manage legal waste and encourages the minimisation of waste production at source. While the Convention has focused some international attention on the risks of exporting toxic waste, it’s proven difficult to enforce, as Rasio Ridha Sani discovered six months ago.
RASIO: Last December we found that there was illegal trafficking from one European country bringing in used condoms. Now we are sending letters to the government of Germany because we don’t know where it comes from actually, but we know we’re receiving it from Germany. This is not easy because since December until now this is two containers with 25 pounds of condoms still in our harbour in Jakarta.
HILL: Rasio Ridha Sani says this illegal load of rubbish illustrates a much broader problem.
RASIO: We don’t know actually how many tonnes that waste come to Indonesia because we know we just found some of them perhaps, kind of, iceberg.
HILL: This year’s summit in Bali has chosen to particularly focus on controlling illegal waste traffic. As an example, 80 per cent of all American electronic component waste is exported, most of it to Asia, and much of it illegally. The US is not a signatory to the Basel Convention and it’s accused - along with other developed countries, of taking advantage of poorer nations. Sarah Westervelt, is an electronic waste activist from the US-based lobby group, the Basel Action Network.
WESTERVELT: It’s so profitable to export this hazardous waste to a developing country that will actually pay for it like China or India or Vietnam. There is a big incentive to do that rather than to pay to have it managed responsibly in the developed world.
HILL: Massive amounts of electronic waste, are generated every time someone upgrades their PC, changes to a flat screen TV, or gets a better mobile phone. At the other end of the waste chain, this means hazardous items are disassembled all too often by workers unprotected by occupational safety and employment laws. Sarah Westervelt again.
WESTERVELT: Batteries, for example lap top batteries, or burnt-out fluorescent lamps in an LCD screen, which has mercury in it of course, CRT - cathode ray tubes, that’s full of leaded glass that no longer works and all that lead ends up being exported in the name of reuse and gets dumped in the receiving country because its not reusable.
HILL: Ms Westervelt says workers often handle life-threatening toxins with their bare hands and no masks, for as little as $US1.50 a day.
WESTERVELT: The impacts have just been absolutely horrific. It’s really hard to conceive of, but what we have documented in China is absolutely extraordinary levels of these toxins from the e-waste processing operations all over rivers and soil and in human tissue. Some of the water samples had lead levels 2,400 times higher than the World Health Organisation’s limit for lead in drinking water.
HILL: Mr Rasio Ridha Sani says he hopes the Basel Convention Summit will produce a stronger global treaty banning the movement of hazardous waste altogether.
RASIO: I think this is why for us we really need this kind of instrument because we have to care for our people and also our children as well as our environment.
Source: http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/
Add comment June 25th, 2008