Countries ratify ban on global exports of hazardous waste

By Ginger Hervey

An amendment to the Basel Convention that will prohibit hazardous waste exports from developed to non-developed countries, has finally been ratified by enough countries to enter into force.

The so-called ‘Ban Amendment’, which stops member states of the EU and the OECD from exporting hazardous waste to any other country, was adopted as part of the Basel Convention nearly 25 years ago.

The convention regulates the trade of chemicals contained in hazardous waste, notably in electronic and electrical waste. And it has been a major driver for global electronics companies to phase out metals such as lead from their products (see box below).

Although the Ban Amendment was adopted in 1995 at the third conference of parties to the Basel Convention, it needed 75% of those present to ratify it.

On 6 September, Croatia became the 97th country to do this and it will therefore become legally binding for all ratifying countries on 5 December.

The Basel Convention secretariat said that the "spirit of the Ban Amendment has been very much alive for many years", with many developed countries already declining to export hazardous wastes and many developing countries declining to receive it.

However, it added that the entry into force has "significant political weight," as a "flagship of international efforts to ensure that those countries with the capacity to manage their hazardous wastes in an environmentally sound manner take responsibility for them."

Not all countries
Several key developed countries have not ratified the amendment, including Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and the US.

The US has not ratified the Basel Convention at all. The country has opposed other of its recent changes to international laws on plastic waste exports. In July, the US EPA objected to OECD plans to adopt the convention`s proposals to require exporting countries to receive prior informed consent (Pic) from receiving countries before they export any plastics that are not clean, sorted and intended for recycling.

The Basel Convention
In a nutshell: The convention aims to reduce the movement of hazardous waste between countries, and specifically to prevent this being sent from developed to developing countries, through the ‘prior informed consent’ procedure. It controls 18 waste streams as well as any waste that contains 27 listed substances.

History: It was adopted in 1989 and entered into force in 1992. This followed several incidents in the late 1980s where toxic waste was shipped to developing countries without the knowledge or approval of the recipients` government, in efforts to avoid increasingly high costs for disposal in the developed world.

Who`s involved? Basel has 187 parties.

Who`s not? The only non-ratifying countries are the US and Haiti.


Source: Chemical Watch