The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [150]
Although TURI’s work focuses on Massachusetts, its resources and tools are available online for anyone, anywhere. For those working to clean up industries, finding TURI is like hitting the jackpot. No longer can polluting industries get away with saying they’d love to change, but there just aren’t alternatives. TURI’s CleanerSolutions database offers options including “find a cleaner” and “replace a solvent.” Its online Pollution Prevention Gems (P2gems.org) has reams of information on reducing toxics in specific sectors, industrial processes, and products, for everything from bleaching and metal finishing to printing and wood finishing.
The bad news is that, as this book was going to press, funding for TURI was in jeopardy. In spite of its phenomenal success in reducing toxic chemical use, it may fall victim to budget cuts in the state of Massachusetts. Environmental health advocates are fighting back, pointing out that the program pays for itself, as industries’ fees cover the costs of administering TURI, not to mention that preventing hazardous waste in the first place is far more economical than cleaning it up later. For updates, visit TURI at www.turi.org.
Over the Sea and Far Away...
In twenty years of working on waste, I’ve seen a lot of attempts by companies in our country to get rid of our trash—especially our most troublesome toxic trash—by shipping it somewhere else in the world. But guess what? The problems don’t go away. May I repeat: there is no “away.” Here are some of the most tragic stories I collected while tracking the trafficking of waste around the globe.
To Bangladesh
In late 1991, four South Carolina–based companies secretly mixed 1,000 tons of hazardous waste containing high amounts of lead and cadmium into a shipment of fertilizer that the Bangladesh government had purchased with a loan from the Asian Development Bank. This was discovered by U.S. environmental authorities at the local and state level during a random inspection of the Stoller Chemical facility (which produced the fertilizer). They found that Stoller had mixed in an unapproved material with levels of lead and cadmium beyond the legal limits, and they alerted criminal investigators at the Environmental Protection Agency. At that time, I was in close touch with EPA officials who tracked the international waste trade, and one of them told me about it.
Unfortunately, the EPA didn’t learn of the illegal export until the contaminated fertilizer had already reached Bangladesh. By U.S. law, the companies would have been able to export this kind of toxic waste only after first obtaining written permission from the importing country.111 In this case they’d ignored that step, so the shipment was illegal. The companies were fined for the procedural violation, but neither the United States nor the Bangladeshi government was interested in taking action to recall the waste.
I headed straight to Bangladesh. My goal was to find out what had happened to the fertilizer and, if it had already been used on farms, to collect soil samples as evidence to force both governments to clean it up. First, I visited the U.S. embassy in the capital city of Dhaka. I hoped the embassy would express some concern, or perhaps embarrassment, over the export of the contaminated fertilizer. On the contrary, the embassy staff person kept repeating, “It is not our responsibility. The shipment was a private transaction between private companies and we do not get involved in private business transactions.” Sure, U.S. embassies stay out of U.S. business activities overseas, just like those relentless Bangladeshi mosquitoes stayed out of my face.
A representative of a local environmental organization in Bangladesh was far more helpful, accompanying me by bus and then bicycle rickshaw to a small town in the countryside where the contaminated fertilizer was rumored to still be for sale. Stepping off the bus, it was hard for me to imagine why any farmer felt the need