Trafigura have denied that they knowingly were involved in any wrong doing in respect of the dumping of waste in the Ivory Coast in 2006. My previous post sets out the company’s position as of yesterday. Basically Trafigura denies that the slops within the vessel the Probo Koala could not have caused fatalities or injuries (ie not dangerous), there was no plan to dump waste West Africa and besides everything was the fault of some Africans (so it really doesn’t count at all I suppose)
According to the website Newsnight revealed that the company knew exactly that the waste dumped in Ivory Coast in 2006 was hazardous. Furthermore there are smoking gun emails to support the point. Please go to the link to view the emails. They are also available on the Guardian website.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me nervous about KRudd and PWongs plan to delegate carbon credits to poor countries. These issues should be solved at home, not delegated to people like illegal waste haulers (read dodgy tree planters) in the Ivory Coast.
I work in the contaminated land assessment and clean up business. This kind of stuff is easily managed, it just costs money, which can eat into profit margins. A regulator here in South Australia once told me that there was no such thing as cheap land. It was usually cheap for a reason. Just so the original oil that Trafigura bought. It was cheap for a reason.