For immediate release: May 28, 2003
ACTIVISTS DEMAND A HALT TO TOXIC MERCURY TRADE
UPON ARRIVAL OF REJECTED INDIAN MERCURY
NEW YORK -- A ship carrying 290 metric tons of toxic mercury-laden waste that contaminated a community in India was greeted upon its arrival today into New York harbor by demands that the mercury be permanently stored and not recycled into the global marketplace. The mercury waste -- an assortment of waste glass contaminated with mercury, effluent sludge, broken thermometers and metallic mercuryis destined for a US recycling facility after being collected from a thermometer factory owned by the UNILEVER subsidiary, Hindustan Lever Limited located in the town of Kodaikanal, state of Tamil Nadu, India. An activist coalition composed of Greenpeace, the Ban Mercury Working Group, the Basel Action Network, and Clean Air Council, have asked the transnational giant UNILEVER for a meeting to negotiate a permanent retirement of the mercury (see attached letter).
"It will be a travesty of environmental justice if the same toxic mercury waste that damaged the people and the environment in India merely gets recycled and then sold back to India or other developing countries, where it will continue its cycle of poisoning developing countries again," said Ravi Agarwal, of Toxics Link India. "UNILEVER should cease its mercury double standard. Mercury-containing products have been banned for many years in the Netherlands, UNILEVER's home state," said Eco Matser, toxic campaigner at Greenpeace Netherlands.
There is mounting international concern over the sale of recycled mercury flooding the world market. Environmental groups contend that increasingly mercury is expected to be made obsolete due to its severe toxicity and instead of retiring the resulting mercury glut in safe and monitored perpetual storage, it will be dumped into the world market, ushering in cheaper mercury prices, which will increase further mercury use and subsequent harmful releases. The destination of the toxic mercury waste from India is Hellertown, Pennsylvania where it is expected to be recycled by Bethlehem Apparatus, Co. the worlds largest mercury recycling facility, and "unless other arrangements are made" sold back on the open market.
"The toxic buck must stop here," said Michael Bender of the Mercury Policy Project, and representative of the Ban-Mercury-Working Group. Just as was done with the mercury from the closure of the Holtra-Chem chloralkali facility in Maine, UNILEVER must place their mercury in permanent, monitored, safe storage."
Of particular concern to advocates worldwide is the expected closing of 10 mercury-cell chlor-alkali plants in the US over the next decade or so, and the mandatory dismantling of 47 such plants in Europe by 2007 that use mercury in their production process. The dismantling will release 15,000 metric tons of mercury for resale in Europe and from 1,500 to 2,500 metric tons in the US.
"The life-cycle of mercury is really a death cycle with every step, from mining, trade, use, and recycling, placing the planet at levels of risk and harm we can no longer afford," said Aaron Firestone of the Clean Air Council in Pennsylvania. "We already have far too much mercury floating around the biosphere and marketplace. Its time to say -- enough."
Last February 2003, the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) adopted a decision on mercury during its 22nd Meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, stating that there is sufficient evidence of significant global adverse impacts of mercury that warrant further international action to reduce the risks to human health and the environment from the release of mercury to the environment. Among the impacts of concern is the widespread and increasing contamination of the worlds fish stocks a major global protein source for human populations. International and local environmental groups have made a call to various governments and mercury-using industries to heed the UNEP Governing Council decision by, among others, utilizing non-mercury products and alternative technologies, phasing-out the use of mercury in products and industrial processes, reducing mercury releases and for the immediate and long-term monitored storage of recycled and excess mercury.
"UNILEVER has already been found guilty of exploiting lax environmental regulations and cheap labor in countries like India," said Richard Gutierrez of the Basel Action Network. "We call on them to rectify their mistake by putting a decisive end to the mercury death spiral. The decision is in their hands."
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For more information contact:
Ravi Agarwal, Toxics Link India, Phone: 110 014-432-8006/432-0711, E-mail: ravig1@vsnl.com
Michael Bender, Mercury Policy Project/Ban Mercury Working Group, Phone: 802-223-9000,
E-mail: mercurypolicy@aol.com
Eco Matser, Greenpeace Netherlands, Phone: 31 6 212-969-19, E-mail: ematser@greenpeace.nl
Aaron Firestone, Clean Air Council, Phone: 215-567-4004 ext. 273, E-mail: afirestone@cleanair.org
Richard Gutierrez, Basel Action Network, Phone: 206-652-5555, E-mail: rgutierrez@ban.org
For more information visit:
zope.greenpeace.org/z/gpindia/welcome
www.mercurypolicy.org
www.ban.org/Ban-Hg-Wg
www.chem.unep.ch/mercury
www.cleanair.org
www.ban.org