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!
Related posts:
- Britain Gets Caught Dumping Toxic Waste
- Robot Seeks Out Toxic Waste Dumped by the Mafia
- Wild Dogs Turn Green After Eating Toxic Waste
- EPA to Investigate Waste Dumping in Poor U.S. Communities
- Ghana, an E-Waste Graveyard
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under Consciousness, Green Living, Health, Science, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
