Greenpeace issued a report several weeks ago, during my hiatus, that I have just had an opportunity to review. Poisoning the Pearl is based on the results of wastewater samples conducted by Greenpeace investigators of several facilities operating in the Pearl River Delta. The results were discouraging, but predictable.
- All the facilities sampled were found to be discharging wastewater containing chemicals with proven or suspected hazardous properties
- For three of the five facilities, samples of discharged wastewater contained concentrations of chemicals which exceeded the limits set by Guangdong provincial effluent standards
- A number of the facilities were found to be discharging various types of organic chemicals, many of them hazardous, which are not currently being monitored or regulated under Guangdong effluent standards
The report is among the first I am aware of where a third-party has obtained samples of effluent from industrial discharges in China and had them analyzed fro a whole suite of pollutants. As the report notes “academic studies of hazardous chemical contamination in the area rarely involve direct sampling from industrial sources, so they fail to identify the individual culprits responsible for it. There is also a policy gap regarding the amount of attention the government pays to curbing the discharge of hazardous chemicals into water systems.”
Greenpeace recommends that the culprits be required to conduct clean production audits pursuant to Article 28 of China’s Clean Production Law. This is good advice, and I encourage Greenpeace to keep the pressure on Guangdong Province to include these companies on their annual mandatory clean production audit list.
The Chinese press has not covered these results extensively, and when they have they have tended to focus on the fact that most of the companies found in violation were foreign. “Foreign” in this case means Hong Kong and the companies are probably just fronts for recycled Mainland money anyway. The “victim” card is one of the most unhelpful that China’s environmental commentators play. If a foreign company is violating China’s environmental laws fine it, and, if it doesn’t correct its violations, shut it down. It’s really that simple. So try this approach: more action, less whining.
In any event, congratulations to Greenpeace which is slowly but surely ratcheting up the level of its engagement with China on environmental issues.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Adam Minter // Nov 17, 2009 at 10:27 am
Funny you should bring this up - I was just reviewing my notes from a conference I attended in Guangzhou a couple of weeks ago. One of the speeches I attended was given by Li Xinmin, Director General of the Pollution Control Dept at MEP. Among other items, he discussed his agency’s noble attempts to do a comprehensive audit of Chinese hazardous wastes. That is - wastes that are currently in use in various facilities. According to Li, the current inventory includes 10 million metric tons … “but that means that thirty to forty million tons is NOT covered by our inventory.” Something tells me that Greenpeace’s stats might be covering that latter number.
2 Greg // Nov 17, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Want to bet that people are put on patrol to watch for “spies” taking unauthorized water samples?
And Greenpeace might find its people being followed and/or detained.
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