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As the international deadline looms for phasing out ozone-destroying
chemicals, Japan has put in a last-minute request to be exempted from some
of the rules of the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer. ‘This
is a step backwards,’ says Yasuko Matsumoto of Greenpeace Japan. ‘It sends
a bad, negative message to developing countries. Japan, with the best technology
in the world, says it can’t follow the Montreal Protocol.’

Under the protocol, CFCs must be phased out by the end of 1995. According
to the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan is asking for an exemption
that will allow it to use 240 tonnes of four different kinds of CFCs for
medical work, and 180 tonnes of various CFCs for research purposes during
1996. Other countries have also applied for exemptions for ‘essential uses’.
But the ministry also says that it may require an exemption for an ‘undecided’
quantity of CFC-115 for 1997 and 1998. CFC-115 is mixed with HCFC-22 to
make R502, a refrigerant used in supermarket display cases and freezers.

Tetsuo Nishide, director of the Ministry of International Trade and
Industry’s Ozone Protection Office, says Japan is entitled to apply for
an exemption in the case of CFC-115 because the protocol ‘allows exemptions
where no substitutes are available’. Japanese firms are carrying out research
into substitutes, but none is ready yet, he says.

But according to David Clow of the French company Elf-Atochem, substitutes
for CFC-115 are made by at least three companies in France and the US. He
says R502 can be replaced by HFC-134a mixed with HCFC-22, which has less
potential for damaging ozone, or it can be replaced by HFCs 125, 143a and
134a, which do no harm to ozone.

Nishide says it is up to Japanese manufacturers, not the government,
to decide if they can use a substitute. ‘We are giving them guidance, and
telling them to hurry up their development,’ he says. ‘Japanese manufacturers
are developing alternative products. But right now we don’t see established
new products that assure quality and performance.’ German companies have
substituted ammonia.

MITI’s decision to apply for an exemption has been made ‘on the basis
of listening to industry’, says Matsumoto. ‘But Japanese companies only
change direction when they are under legal pressure.’

Last week the Kyodo news agency gave another reason for the application
for exemptions, reporting that they are being sought because many of Japan’s
small businesses depend on CFCs. Small businesses – especially food retailers
– form a powerful political lobby in Japan.

Greenpeace accepts that the application does not breach the letter of
the protocol. ‘But Japan has not made as much effort as possible to comply
with the spirit of that agreement,’ says Matsumoto.