space Press Releases, News Stories

by Hugh Ellis

Greenpeace USA is also investigating the issue but thinks it is now unlikely that the contract will be awarded to Enviroserv.

News reports at the end of last year claimed that Enviroserv is "already working in Namibia and Mozambique, and is expanding to Ghana and Zimbabwe".

It was claimed that Namibia and Mozambique were the two prime sites for New York's waste. However, the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism denies that the company has been allowed to import any waste into the country.

Enviroserv says it is still "involved in discussions with a number of different countries" and has "not settled on a specific country" for possible import of waste.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Justice Networking Forum (ENJF), a South African grassroots environmental organisation, reports that the Danish government is in the process of helping Mozambique to build an incinerator to destroy obsolete pesticides.

The Danish government has apparently appointed an Enviroserv-owned company, Waste-Tech, to carry out certain aspects of the project.

Torben Larsen, project officer at the Royal Danish Embassy in Maputo, told the ENJF that the Danish government could not provide a guarantee that their donated technology could not be used for incinerating imported waste. He thought such a situation unlikely, however, as Mozambique has signed both the Basel and Bamako treaties, which prohibit international trade in hazardous waste.

The Danish government is apparently also considering providing Zimbabwe and Tanzania with facilities to incinerate garbage.

The ENJF says these plants are "a danger to the people's health", especially in Africa, where adequate pollution controls are often not in place.

Enviroserv, however, maintains that such pollution can be controlled, and that these plants provide "a low cost alternative to countries with limited energy resources".