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Feng Yu | stock.adobe.com
The Basel Action Network (BAN), headquartered in Seattle, has
launched an online
whistleblowers portal designed to protect the identity
of those with stories or evidence of companies violating international law and
relevant voluntary certifications.
The
announcement follows what BAN describes as a new "surge of greed and
exploitation" that is sending a "plastic and e-waste tsunami” to
Southeast Asia.
The
organization recently alerted the Malaysian government of ships
carrying e-scrap from the U.S., resulting in the seizure of 106 containers in
June. BAN also cites reports that the Malaysian government raided two more
e-scrap processing factories it discovered in
palm plantations north of Penang, with one factory reportedly turning the
plastic from the electronics into fish food pellets.
“Sadly,
we are finding a new wave of unscrupulous recyclers, waste managers and brokers
that seek to use the developing world as their convenient dumping grounds in
order to maximize profits at the expense of people and the planet,” BAN Chief Operating Officer Hayley Palmer says. “Equally distressing is finding
out how many respectable companies are willing to ignore their corporate
responsibility and make use of such unethical service providers.”
She
adds that BAN has “created a pathway for individuals privy to this disgrace and
willing to choose integrity.”
The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary
Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, an international
treaty that entered into force in May 1995 but that the U.S. has as yet to
ratify, prohibits the export of hazardous waste, including electronic, from
developed to developing countries and requires strict controls on most plastic
scrap as well.
In
2010, BAN launched e-Stewards,
a third-party audited certification program for electronics recyclers that calls
for participants to operate as if they are in a country that has ratified the
Basel Convention. The e-Stewards certification program offers a detailed
standard and replaced BAN’s former Electronic Recycler’s Pledge of True
Stewardship, a program that involved a basic third-party desk and documentation
audit.
"It’s
stunning how companies can claim on the one hand that they project the highest
standards of environment, social impact and governance (ESG), but with the
other sweep their toxic, problematic wastes out the back door to substandard
operations, cloaked by the opaque world of international shipping," BAN founder and Executive Director Jim Puckett says. "With this program, we
aim to place this shame of the recycling industry under a bright spotlight. It
has to stop."
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