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The extent of “Toxic traders”
and their appalling activities peaked during the 1970’s and
1980’s when they were charging waste generators to take their
waste away for 'recycling', but were actually shipping it to third
world countries for dumping instead.
While the “Toxic Traders” got richer from these deals,
some of the world’s poorest people were living next to and
amongst toxic, hazardous waste, which would leak and pollute their
water supplies and soil.
At the end of the 1980’s more and more media attention was
focussed on this unscrupulous practice, which lead to the international
community being outraged and calling on their governments to do
something about it.
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In response to this outrage, the 30
OECD Members drew up a set of regulations called
The Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste Regulations in order
to protect the planet, conserve energy and global metal stocks and
promote recycling. This strategy was also adopted by the United Nations
two months later, who drew up its own set of Transfrontier Shipment
of Hazardous Waste Regulations, which later became known as the
UN Basel Convention. As a result of these new regulations many
“Toxic Traders” and their businesses were prosecuted,
which included jail terms for Directors and Owners of the businesses.
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However, despite all these strict
regulations, “Toxic Traders” are still out there. Some
manage to beat the system by shipping waste under the wrong classifications
or declaring that their hazardous waste are going for recovery operations
when in fact most of the hazardous substances are landfilled once
the valuable components have been removed. This practice is detrimental
to the environment, because the hazardous materials, many of which
are carcinogenic, will leach out of the landfill sites into the
water table polluting the soil and water supplies. This is commonplace
in some of the emerging countries that have ratified the Basel Convention
and because they have ratified the Convention there is nothing illegal
in this practice.
However, “Toxic Traders” do not only operate in third
world and emerging countries – they also have a presence in
the Western countries. Recently a British company, through no
fault of their own, became responsible for a nickel-containing hazardous waste which had been abandoned
at Hull docks and the original owner was beyond the reach of the UK authorities. As a registered waste broker, Catalyst Recycling were approached
for help by the Environment Agency. After exhaustive testing, sampling, and analyses, we determined the exact nature of the waste and arranged for it to be fully and legally recycled at a German specialist facility in co-operation with the Environment Agency and their German counterpart.
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