=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #253
—October 3, 1991—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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INTERNATIONAL WASTE TRADE–PART 1:
A FLAW IN THE GRASS-ROOTS STRATEGY
For nearly a decade the grass-roots movement against toxics has
tried to stop all new waste disposal projects. The strategy is a
simple one, based on sound science and good public policy:
(1) All waste disposal (landfill, incineration and deep-well
injection) ultimately contaminates the environment. There is no
such thing as “safe” disposal.
(2) So long as cheap disposal remains available, the creators of
toxic wastes (including municipal garbage) have little incentive
to create less.
(3) By stopping new disposal projects, the price of disposal can
be driven up, giving waste creators a real incentive to produce
less.
No doubt about it, this strategy is working. The cost of
disposal is now anywhere from $500 to $1000 for a ton of
hazardous waste, and anywhere from $30 to $120 per ton for
municipal solid waste.
Evidence of success is the national focus on recycling.
Everywhere, local and state governments are scrambling for ways
to increase recycling. This has occurred partly because people
want to save the planet but much more importantly because waste
disposal is no longer cheap.
More evidence of success can be found in a piece of legislation
now working its way through Congress sponsored by Representative
Peter Kostmayer (D-PA), called H.R. 3253, The Pollution
Prevention, Community Recycling, and Incinerator Control Act.
This legislation would ban both hazardous and solid waste
incineration for the remainder of this decade, and then would
allow new incinerators to be built only under rigid control. It
is conceivable that this legislation could pass in its present
form; it has more than 30 sponsors today. Or it could be worked
into a new version of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
(RCRA), the nation’s basic law controlling waste disposal, which
is up for reauthorization by Congress and will be debated during
the next year or to (see RHWN #241). In either case, all national
environmental groups have signed onto the Kostmayer bill (with
the exception of National Wildlife Federation and Audubon, which,
perhaps coincidentally, both have representatives of the
incinerator industry on their boards of directors). This
consensus among environmental groups represents an affirmation of
the grass-roots strategy to discourage wastes by cutting off
disposal, essentially stopping up the toilet.
Despite its success, the grass-roots strategy contains one major
flaw, which is available to be exploited by producers of toxic
waste: our failure to control the international trade in wastes.
The failure of U.S. law to close our borders to waste traders is
a loophole you could drive a garbage truck through, and many are.
RCRA is the U.S. law controlling wastes, including both hazardous
waste and municipal solid waste. RCRA is entirely silent on the
shipment of municipal solid waste (and incinerator ash from
municipal solid waste) to foreign countries; such shipments are
perfectly legal. The famous garbage barge (called the MOBRO) and
the ship KHIAN SEA, which carried Philadelphia incinerator ash
from country to country for 18 months trying unsuccessfully to
dump its load, were entirely legal, though the U.S. Justice
Department is investigating whether the KHIAN SEA may have
finally dumped its load of toxic ash illegally in the Indian
Ocean.
Even wastes that are legally defined as hazardous under RCRA can
be shipped to foreign soil. Under RCRA, if a U.S. company can
find someone in another country willing to accept its waste, it
notifies EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), which
notifies the U.S. State Department, which asks the receiving
country if it really wants the stuff. If the answer is yes, the
waste can be shipped. That’s all there is to it. In the case of
U.S. companies shipping hazardous waste to Canada, the process is
even easier; under a 1986 agreement, when the State Department
asks Canada if it will accept the waste, no answer received
within 30 days becomes an automatic yes and the waste can cross
the border. Canada’s laws on landfilling are more lax than ours,
so U.S. companies sent 157,000 tons of toxic waste to Canada in
1990. U.S. laws on incineration are more lax than Canada’s, so
Canada sent us 150,000 tons of toxic waste in 1990.
No one knows how much municipal waste travels between the U.S.,
Canada and Mexico because such commerce is entirely legal and
thus unregulated and unmonitored.
An even larger loophole is the shipment of wastes to developing
countries for “recycling.” The book GLOBAL DUMPING GROUND,
co-authored by the Center for Investigative Reporting and Bill
Moyers, offers several case studies of typical recycling
schemes.[1] Each year the U.S. discards about 70 million
automobile batteries containing roughly a billion pounds of toxic
lead. Automobile batteries can legally be sent abroad for
“recycling.” There they are heated to destroy the plastic battery
case and to free the metallic lead, a potent toxin. GLOBAL
DUMPING GROUND describes workers at a recycling plant in Brazil
where the employer forces them to take EDTA pills, a chelating
agent (a drug that removes toxic metals from the body but also
has powerful side effects). EDTA therapy was formerly used in
this country for children poisoned by lead, but only under close
medical supervision. Despite the forced administration of EDTA,
25 of 29 workers at the plant in Brazil had lead levels exceeding
U.S. safety standards. In a field near the recycling plant, five
cows died and authorities measured high lead content in the
farm’s spring, pond, and pasture.
Increasingly strict regulation of battery recycling plants shut
half of U.S. battery recyclers between 1980 and 1986. But the
international waste trade loophole prevents real control of this
problem and others like it. U.S. companies export used batteries
to Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Canada, India, Venezuela, China, South
Korea, South Africa, and Taiwan. EPA knows these shipments are
toxic but has no authority to intervene unless a battery is
cracked and leaking acid, in which case it can be defined as a
hazardous waste and controlled.
Children in Taiwan living near a lead smelter have elevated lead
levels in blood and teeth. “These children can be expected to
have impaired intelligence, slower physical growth, and some
behavioral disorders–trouble paying attention, hyperactivity,”
says Michael Rabinowitz, a Harvard-trained geochemist studying
lead contamination for the Taiwan government.
U.S. scrap metal exported to Taiwan, to mainland China, and to
numerous other countries, includes transformers filled with PCBs,
lead, cadmium, nickel, mercury, a spectrum of toxic chlorinated
hydrocarbons, waste oil, plastic wastes, and so on. Although they
are not legally defined as hazardous under RCRA, our EPA knows
these wastes are plenty dangerous. GLOBAL DUMPING GROUND quotes
an EPA official saying such wastes are exempt from environmental
controls at the request of the President’s Office of Management
and Budget (OMB), the Commerce Department, the U.S. Trade
Representative’s Office, and the Council of Economic Advisors.
The U.S.’s balance-of-payments problem provides strong incentive
to keep shipping dangerous wastes to Taiwan and elsewhere.
The head of Taiwan’s EPA, Eugene Chien, believes the burden of a
solution should fall on the source of the waste. “The problem
actually relies on the United States because if they cannot
export hazardous waste to the underdeveloped countries, then this
problem is all solved,” says Chien. Jim Vallette of Greenpeace
agrees: “You don’t poison your neighbor. You don’t dump garbage
on your neighbor’s lawn for moral reasons. It’s that simple,”
Vallette says.
So long as the loophole exists in U.S. law, grass-roots action to
curb production of toxics may not actually cause a reduction–it
may just squeeze wastes across the border, where they contaminate
air, water and soil. Sooner or later, on a finite planet, such
problems must come home to roost.
The only environmental organization systematically tracking the
international waste trade is Greenpeace.[2] The Greenpeace waste
trade campaign keeps its ears open for rumors of “recycling”
scams, plans to ship toxic incinerator ash abroad, or other
schemes to ship wastes across borders. By alerting government
officials, news reporters, and environmental groups in the
receiving countries, Greenpeace has derailed hundreds of
international waste trade schemes. But such an informal network
can only catch a small fraction of the total traffic. Ultimately,
only new laws can close these gaping loopholes.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
===============
[1] Center for Investigative Reporting and Bill Moyers, GLOBAL
DUMPING GROUND (Washington, DC: Seven Locks Press, 1990). Also
available as a hard-hitting 58-minute VHS Video from Center for
Investigative Reporting (CIR), 530 Howard St., 2nd floor, San
Francisco, CA 94105; phone (800) 733-0015. From CIR, the book
costs $11.95, the video costs $29.95; the video plus the book
costs $37.50.
Descriptor terms: waste disposal technologies; waste trade;
global environmental problems; rcra; incineration; landfilling;
canada; cir; recycling; batteries; lead smelting; greenpeace;