Brazil to send back British rubbish

Police in Brazil are investigating how 1,400 tonnes of British hazardous waste, including household and hospital waste (including bags of blood), ended up rotting in three Brazilian ports.

Alarm bells have been ringing ever since, with questions being raised in many quarters that the South American country is being used as a waste dump. What is not known now is whether this is an isolated incident. The UK could be held responsible for violating the Basel convention on the movement of hazardous waste.

The British newspaper Guardian says that many European companies have traditionally used Africa as a dumping ground for hazardous waste.

In the meanwhile, Brazil's Minister of Environment, Carlos Minc, was at the port of Rio Grande, with the Superintendent of IBAMA (environment agency) in Rio Grande do Sul, to witness the loading of the first batch of 40 containers containing garbage illegally exported from England to Brazil.

Before the start of shipment of cargo to be sent to England, the Minister met with representatives of the port Revenue Service, Federal Police, the Anvisa, Superintendent of the Port of Rio Grande, the TECON - Container Terminal and the Superintendency Ibama of Rio Grande do Sul to discuss measures to prevent this type of environmental crime.

In addition to defining an investigation of possible environmental liabilities left in Brazil because of illegal imports of waste, there were calls for coordination for action against environmental crimes. Among them, the change in federal law framework for this type of crime, strengthening the supervision of the Federal Revenue agency: Anvisa, Federal Police, IBAMA, and use of electronic equipment for X-ray identification of the material inside the container.

To end the operation Minister Minc reaffirmed: "Brazil is not a garbage can on the planet. We will have to play a major role on this issue, requiring change in this type of behavior on the part of rich countries. "

There are a further forty containers with illegal junk awaiting to be picked up at the port of Santos in Sao Paulo.