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Countries that belong to the Basel Convention, which controls international
trade in hazardous waste, have agreed to stop all exports of toxic waste
to developing countries and Eastern Europe by the end of 1997. But the European
Union says it will continue to export some types of waste which the Basel
Convention claims are toxic but which the EU insists are safe.

The Basel Convention was signed in 1989 under the auspices of the UN
Environment Programme. In 1992, the G77 group of developing countries asked
Basel members to ban waste exports to non-industrialised countries. Last
week, 127 members of the Convention met in Geneva to discuss the request.

Denmark and the Netherlands both supported the ban, while the official
EU position – presented in Geneva by the European Commission and backed
strongly by Britain and Germany – was that industrial nations should be
allowed to export waste for recycling to any country that agreed to take
it. Most waste exports are officially ‘for recycling’, although in the Third
World and Eastern Europe much of the waste is simply dumped or recycled
under unsafe conditions (see ‘Europe’s green channel for toxic waste’, New
Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ, 13 March 1993).

After stormy confrontations back in Brussels, EU ministers finally agreed
to ban exports of waste for recycling to countries outside the OECD by the
end of 1997. It is already illegal to ship toxic waste to countries outside
the OECD simply for dumping.

In Geneva, the Basel Convention adopted the EU position. However, there
is a big difference of opinion between the EU and the other members of the
Basel Convention over which wastes are covered by the ban. Last year, the
EU adopted rules governing the types of waste that its members could export
for recycling.

The EU considers wastes on its ‘amber’ or ‘red’ lists, which include
lead-acid batteries, asbestos and mercury wastes, to be hazardous, and subject
to the Basel Convention.

According to Greenpeace, Britain shipped 578 tonnes of lead waste, including
lead-acid batteries, to Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bulgaria and
South Korea in 1992. Australia and Japan exported 47 000 tonnes of lead-acid
batteries, mostly to Southeast Asia, in 1992. Smelting the batteries is
alleged to cause severe pollution and health problems.

But the EU insists that waste on its ‘green’ list is not hazardous,
and so is not regulated by Basel. This includes copper, lead, cadmium and
zinc ‘wastes and scrap’, steel and plastic scrap. The Commission says such
waste can be shipped to any country that agrees to take it, without any
special controls.

The Basel Convention lists ‘copper compounds, lead, lead compounds,
cadmium, cadmium compounds, and zinc compounds’ as hazardous waste. But
staff at the Commission say that these categories, and the green list’s
metal ‘waste and scrap’, are ‘not the same thing’.

In January the Commission wrote to the governments of developing and
Eastern European countries, asking if they would accept green, amber or
red list wastes. According to officials in Brussels, many have written back
saying they would. Thailand and South Korea replied that they would take
amber list wastes, even though this will be illegal after 1997.

Countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific which receive aid
under the EU’s Lome Convention are among those saying they will take green
list waste. The Lome Convention itself bans waste exports, but the Commission
says this applies only to ‘Basel wastes’, not those on its green list. It
says that copper, lead, zinc and cadmium waste and scrap can be shipped.

If green list waste were handled under Basel, each shipment would have
to be approved within 60 days by the importing country. According to the
BIR, the international recycling association, this would kill the recycling
industry, which makes its profits by shipping large volumes quickly, when
market conditions are right.

The green list covers most of the waste of concern to the BIR. It says
Taiwan buys 75 per cent of the scrap zinc exported by the EU, while India
buys 17 per cent of the EU’s exports of scrap copper, and 14 per cent of
its exports of copper ‘ashes and residues’. Waste exports from OECD to non-OECD
countries in 1990 were worth $19 billion.