space Press Releases, News Stories

GreenPeace International and The Basel Action Network

BAN and Greenpeace vowed to wage an international campaign to close the loopholes in international and domestic laws which allow hazardous exports for shipbreaking to continue.

"We demand that the US government revoke its support for contaminated ships-for-scrap export, and stop sending their poisonous wastes to facilities with abysmal worker safety and environmental conditions," said Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace International. Furtado said the groups will raise the issue at the next appropriate meeting of the Basel Convention on the Control of the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.

Already, BAN and Greenpeace, in coalition with developing and progressive European countries, have won a full global ban on the export of hazardous wastes from the industrialized nations to developing countries within the Basel treaty. So far though, most countries have not yet applied the Basel Convention to ship-for-scrap schemes, even though contaminated scrap metal bound for recycling is already subject to the Basel Ban.

The US is not yet a party to the Basel Convention and refuses to ratify the Basel Ban. Indeed, the US has worked very hard to prevent the passage of the international waste dumping ban but has been soundly defeated at the Basel Convention on three occasions.

"It is clear that the United States views the developing world as a promising repository for its hazardous waste problems, including a whole generation of asbestos and PCB laden ships. The panel's decision is a sad tribute to gutless bureaucracy and morally bankrupt policy," said Jim Puckett of the BAN in Seattle.

Last January, Greenpeace and BAN - India organized a peaceful demonstration with activists from all the Indian central trade unions, people's movements and citizens' groups at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi to protest the U.S. exports of toxic-laden ships for scrap to South Asia. The primary destination of ships for scrap in India, is the port of Alang in the state of Gujarat. There, 35,000 poor laborers working in primitive conditions cut open the ships with blowtorches and chisels. Deaths or crippling accidents occur almost daily and exposure to toxic compounds goes completely unregulated.

The Interagency Panel on Ship Scrapping report is on the Department of Defense website at: http://www.denix.osd.mil.

CONTACTS:

Marcelo Furtado, Greenpeace International, Brazil
ph: +55-11-30-61-29-34. E-mail: mfurtado@dialb.greenpeace.org
Website: http://www.greenpeace.org

Jim Puckett, Basel Action Network Secretariat, Seattle
Phone/fax: +1-206-720-6426, E-mail: jpuckett@ban.org
Website: http://www.ban.org.

According to the full report, these were the factors (in quotes) which influenced the panels decision on continuing to allow exports. Annotated comments added by the Basel Action Network (BAN).

"Environmental, health and safety standards and conditions in many of the countries where ship scrapping is performed are less stringent than those in the United States."

[This is a rather remarkable understatement. The panel should have been required to visit Alang. Yet eve if the conditions abroad were in theory the equal of those in the United States, the US still bears the responsibility to take care of its own waste problems at home]

"On a relative scale, the tonnage of US Government vessels is small compared to the available tonnage for the international market. The current backlog of vessels amounts to only 1 million light ship tons, with another 1 million tons available over the next 10 years, whereas the tonnage of obsolete vessels available for scrap in the global marketplace is expected to amount to nearly 68 million light ship tons over the next ten years."

[The relevance of this statement is hard to understand. Is this another way of saying, that the developing world is already getting trashed, thus they will hardly notice more pain and suffering?]

"The US Maritime Administration has both a statutory mandate to sell ships and authority, under existing law, to sell them overseas. If the export option and the revenue it generates were not available, the statutory programs supported by US Maritime Administration sales would have to be funded through alternative means."

[In other words, we do not want to stop poisoning poorer countries as it has proven to be very profitable.]

"There appears to be no prohibition on the export of uncontaminated ships or scrapping in international law or export agreements to which the United States is a party. The Panel is not aware of any countries that prohibit the export of obsolete vessels on the basis that they may contain hazardous materials."

[Everyone else is doing it.]

"The Panel recognizes the Department of the Navy and the US Maritime Administration have agreed to confer with the US Environmental Protection Agency and other interested agencies to discuss this report's implications before resuming the exporting of ships for scrapping."

[Perhaps more time is needed so the government can get its message to the world straight. Because at the Basel Convention, the US position is that as long as the recycling facility is environmentally sound then toxic exports for recycling should be allowed, whereas in the Panel Report, the soundness of the facility hardly seems to matter. In 1994 the Clinton Administration proposed new waste trade principles, the foremost of which was that the USA would never again export hazardous wastes outside of North America without permission from the President. What happened to these principles? Does the US still have any principles?]