Hazardous Waste is Shipped from India to U.S. Recycling Plant May 7, 2003
by Saritha Rai Bangalore, New York Times
5 May 2003 –
In what environmental activists in India are hailing as a major victory, tons of hazardous waste from an abandoned thermometer factory owned by India's largest consumer products company, Hindustan Lever Ltd., is heading to a recycling plant in the United States for safe disposal.
About 300 tons of mercury-contaminated material and waste from the thermometer plant in Kodaikanal town, in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, will be shipped to the United States.
A ship carrying the material is expected to dock in New York on May 29. The waste shipment is headed to Bethlehem Apparatus Company, in Hellertown, Pa., the world's largest mercury recycling facility.
Ameer Shahul, the corporate campaign coordinator for Greenpeace India, termed the shipment "reverse dumping," referring to a reversal of earlier instances in which hazardous material has been shipped from the developed world to poorer countries.
Prolonged protests from environmental activists led to the closing of the Hindustan Lever plant two years ago. Hindustan Lever is a subsidiary of Unilever.
"We have forced the company to send back hazardous material from a poor country like India, an event that doesn't happen too often," said V. R. Rajagopal Dorairajah, a member of Palani Hills Conservation Council, one of the conservation groups involved in the dispute. "This is a big win for us."
Mercury is a heavy metal that is very toxic even in small doses. Exposure to mercury can lead to damage of the brain, spinal cord, kidneys and liver.
India has no recycling facilities for mercury-contaminated material.
On Wednesday, the ship carrying several containers of contaminants from the plant, including waste glass tainted with mercury, effluent sludge, thermometers and metallic mercury, will leave Tuticorin port, about 200 miles south of the city of Madras in southeastern India.
Greenpeace activists who joined local environmental groups to campaign against the plant are closely monitoring the hazardous cargo.
Hindustan Lever confirmed the shipment. The waste was transported by road to the southern port under police supervision during daylight hours, the company said.
The thermometer factory was acquired by Hindustan Lever from Pond's India Ltd., a cosmetics maker.
Pond's moved the factory to India from the United States after the plant owned there by its parent, Chesebrough-Pond's, had been dismantled.
The mercury for the thermometers was imported, primarily from the United States, and finished thermometers were exported to markets in the United States and Europe.
The thermometer plant operated for nearly two decades in Kodaikanal, a popular summer resort dating back to the colonial period.
Hindustan Lever said it was taking action to remediate contaminated soil according to stringent international regulations.
It is currently seeking approval of its remediation plan by the Tamil Nadu pollution control board before it starts the process, the company said.
Environmental activists have charged that mercury vapor released from the factory has impaired the health of the workers and community, a charge that Hindustan Lever vehemently denies.
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