Environmental Health Groups Celebrate the End to EU Allowance for Banned Flame Retardant Chemicals to Enter Recycling Streams & New Products
Gothenburg, Sweden The European Union (EU) has taken an important step towards cleaning up its recycling; it will no longer allow materials containing a class of toxic, globally banned flame retardants known as PBDEs to be recycled. Researchers had revealed that across Europe, alarming levels of toxic banned flame retardants and related chemicals, which originated largely from discarded electronics equipment, were contaminating the recycling stream and new consumer goods made from recycled plastics. Environmental health advocates applaud the EU’s decision and encourage the six remaining countries with PBDE recycling exemptions to follow suit.
On the 5th of December 2019, the Basel Ban Amendment became international law. The Ban Amendment, adopted by the parties to the Basel Convention in 1995, prohibits the export of hazardous wastes from member states of the European Union, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and Liechtenstein to all other countries.
IPEN & BAN have produced a Basel Ban Amendment Guide, covering the implications and next steps for countries, public interest groups, and other stakeholders with the common goal to stop international hazardous waste dumping.
IPEN has joined 15 public interest NGOs and networks in providing critical comments on the draft European Union (EU) law on PFOA and PFOA-related compounds. In a letter dated 4 December 2019, NGOs noted that the proposed limit for PFOA in consumer products is not protective and not consistent with updated scientific information on the extreme toxicity of PFOA.
Plastic waste from America, collected for recycling, is shipped to Indonesia. Some is burned as fuel by tofu makers, producing deadly chemicals and contaminating food.
Tropodo, Indonesia Black smoke billows from smokestacks towering above the village. The smell of burning plastic fills the air. Patches of black ash cover the ground. It’s another day of making tofu.
A United Nations committee’s recent recommendation to ban an entire group of persistent fluorochemicals will better protect communities, consumers, and workers, according to an international environmental organization.
