UK Getting its Toxic Waste Back from Brazil

Last week, it was discovered that British companies had been dumping toxic waste in Brazil and Ghana, polluting poor communities and endangering the health of the people who live there. The waste included syringes, condoms and bags of blood along with other hazardous substances. Brazil, for one, isn’t going to take it any more – the country is demanding that the UK take it all back.

Britain’s Head of Waste, Liz Parks, says taking back the waste – which has been found in about 90 shipping containers – could take weeks. Two British companies have been identified as the culprits.

From BBC News:

She also warned the British courts took the dumping of hazardous waste very seriously.

“We do prosecute people. We’ve had a number of successful prosecutions in recent years.

“And in fact in the crown court, people can be fined unlimited amounts and prison sentences are imposed.”

Roberto Messias, president of the Brazilian environment agency, Ibama, declared that Brazil was “not a big rubbish dump of the world”.

The agency also said the arrival of the toxic cargo had violated the Basel Convention on the movement of hazardous waste, of which both the UK and Brazil are signatories, which came into force in 1992.

Even worse than the fact that Western countries think it’s cool to unload their toxic waste on other countries is the fact that the guy that owns the two companies is Brazilian himself. The director of one of the companies claims that the containers should have contained only plastics for recycling and that any other contents were the responsibility of their suppliers – but there’s no way they didn’t know that their shipping containers were full of rotting, maggot-infested medical waste.

We’ve got to find better ways to deal with all of the waste we’re producing as we multiply across the face of this planet. Things are getting out of hand.

Link [BBC News]
Photo credit: Flickr user Totoro!

Britain Gets Caught Dumping Toxic Waste

It’s been going on for decades, and nobody has ever called them out on it. Perhaps that’s what gave British companies the balls to continue dumping toxic hazardous waste in countries like Brazil and Ghana for all these years, despite the fact that it’s clearly harmful to the environment and human health. But two companies have finally been formally accused of dumping, which may help call attention to the problem.

Not that Britain is alone – companies in the United States and other Western countries do it too, and government has looked the other way. Our toxic waste has long been somebody else’s problem – namely, poor people who have no way to protect themselves from the onslaught of chemicals.

From Times Online:

Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, ordered an investigation into two British companies linked to 90 shipping containers containing 1,400 tonnes of waste. They included syringes, condoms and nappies. The companies that received the waste — sent from Felixstowe to three Brazilian ports — said that they had been expecting recyclable plastic.

In a separate case, the Ministry of Defence was unable to explain how one of its computers was found by The Times on a notorious dump on the outskirts of Accra, Ghana. Children as young as 5 extract scrap metal from electrical items there and are exposed to potentially lethal chemicals.

Inspectors from Brazil’s environment agency, Ibama, found hospital waste in several containers, reportedly including bags of blood. Another container was full of dirty toys with a note in Portuguese saying they should be washed before being given to “poor Brazilian children”.

Ingrid Oberg, an Ibama official, who opened containers found in the port of Santos on national television news, said: “Whoever put this rubbish into the containers in the UK knew what they were doing and knew where they were going, so it is a criminal act. England needs to assume responsibility.”

Worldwide Biorecyclables Ltd and UK Multiplas Recycling Ltd are the companies being investigated. They’re hardly the only ones that do it, but forcing these companies to take responsibility for their actions may make others think twice before continuing the despicable practice.

Unfortunately, they’ll probably just find sneakier ways to do it. The European Union tightened toxic shipment rules in 2007 and dumping still happens all the time.

PBS Frontline has been conducting an investigation into e-waste dumping in Ghana – check out the video in our recent post, ‘Ghana, an E-Waste Graveyard’.

Link [Times Online]
Photo credit: BBC News

Rehabilitated Penguins Released in South America

Ready, get set, go! On Oct 4th, after months of rehabilitation, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) released 372 Magellanic penguins in Brazil. Watch as they find their way back to the ocean:

The International Fund for Animal Welfare works to improve the welfare of wild and domestic animals throughout the world by reducing commercial exploitation of animals, protecting wildlife habitats, and assisting animals in distress. IFAW works around the world to rescue animals in harm’s way and to provide shelter and care for orphaned, injured, or mistreated animals, including stranded sea mammals and birds affected by oil spills.

1/40th of the World’s Rainforests Cleared in 5 Years

A satellite image shows where the dark green pristine forest areas in the Brazil rainforest are being encroached upon by the light green and brown deforested areas.

I am so sick of having to save the rainforest. Really, it boggles my mind that there are still people out there who think it’s okay to cut it down. It’s amazing that some people just don’t care. We’re screwing over the planet a few acres at a time. That’s why news like this is so very depressing.

From Seattlepi.com:

The remote-sensing work lead by Matthew Hansen of South Dakota State University says that from 2000 to 2005 alone, we managed to chop down 2.5 percent of the world’s rainforests. That’s 1/40th of the whole!

Hansen and his team used Landsat photography to measure the forest loss — meaning they didn’t have to reply on notoriously incomplete estimates from governments, which in some cases don’t even know the clearing is going on.

This new research shows that Brazil accounts for nearly half of global deforestation. Brazil alone! Since Brazil is a ‘developing country’, they’re exempt from the Kyoto treaty and thus have no motivation to protect the ‘lungs of the world’. They’re trying to build their economy through cutting down rainforest to plant fields for sugar cane and biofuels, as well as for logging.

It seems like well-off countries need to step in to help Brazil’s economy in a way that doesn’t sacrifice the rainforests. And, consumers need to stop buying Brazilian wood. There are plenty of alternatives out there.

The world without rainforests will not be a pleasant place to be.

Link [Seattlepi.com]
Photo credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Story of ‘Uncontacted Brazilian Tribe’ Not Entirely True

We got punked, along with the rest of the world. When the Brazilian media released photos of an ‘undiscovered native tribe’ in the Amazon, painted head-to-toe and pointing spears at the airplane that was flying overhead, people around the world were amazed. Now, it’s been revealed that, while this is indeed a real uncontacted tribe, the Brazilian government has known about them for decades – so they aren’t ‘newly discovered’.

It turns out that Carlos Meirelles, who works for the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency, Funai, intentionally flew over the area where the tribe is known to live in an attempt to get a photograph, so that he could both prove wrong those people who insist there are no more isolated tribes left in the world, and so he could call attention to the danger facing them in the form of outside contact. Ironically, flying over the tribe in an airplane and photographing them is, in itself, a form of outside contact.

From The Guardian:

In his first interviews since the disclosure of the tribe’s existence, Meirelles described how he found the group, detailed how they lived and how he planned the publicity to protect them and other tribes in similar danger of losing the habitat in which they have flourished for hundreds of years.

Meirelles admitted that the tribe was first known about almost a century ago and that the apparently chance encounter that produced the now famous images was no accident. ‘When we think we might have found an isolated tribe,’ he told al-Jazeera, ‘a sertanista like me walks in the forest for two or three years to gather evidence and we mark it in our [global positioning system]. We then map the territory the Indians occupy and we draw that protected territory without making contact with them. And finally we set up a small outpost where we can monitor their protection.’

Meirelles wanted proof that the tribes were flourishing, to confirm that the government policy of no contact and protection was working. The aim was partially to convince Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, that the tribe is real, since Garcia has stated in the past that he thinks uncontacted tribes along the Peru/Brazil border are ‘the creation of the imagination’ of environmentalists and anthropologists. Since the photos were released, Peru has begun to re-examine their logging policies – they had been cutting down trees dangerously close to the tribe’s home.

Hopefully all of this will preserve the areas of the Amazon where native tribes still live, so that, in the event that they did become aware of outside society, they would still have a choice as to whether they wanted to join it or continue living as they have been. Imagine how traumatic it would be for them to be forced into modern society due to logging.

Link [The Guardian]

Brazil Uses Local, Natural Condoms to Protect Rainforest, Prevent AIDS

In a move that confirms our belief that every other country’s government is smarter than ours, Brazil has begun using condoms made of locally-sourced natural latex to protect their rainforests. If that gives you a mental image of giant rubbers stretched over trees, let Reuters explain:

Environmentalists say tapping native rubber trees helps generate income for Amazon residents and reduces pressure to fell trees. More than 550 families will earn a total of 2.2 million reais ($1.3 million) annually producing condoms, the ministry said.

The intention is also to reduce Brazil’s dependence on imported condoms, which are distributed free as part of a national program to combat AIDS.

This government-run condom factory will use latex that comes from the Chico Mendes reserve, and will be the only ones made of latex harvested from a tropical forest. The Brazilian government is the self-proclaimed world’s largest single buyer of condoms.

What could be more awesome than preventing the spread of a deadly disease, protecting rainforests, giving jobs to locals, and reducing dependence on imported goods with condoms, of all things?!

Link [Reuters]

Photo: Flickr user celebdu