Subject : Ivory Coast/Toxic wastes

Notice #2: Ivory Coast Pollution

The belated and muddled accounts of multinational Trafigura, broker of oil products whose parent company is based in the Netherlands, intend to conceal the terrible truth. Trafigura delivered the non complying waste to the operator Amsterdam Port Services (APS), refused to pay the treatment surcharge, and did not respect the European Parliament and Counsel’s directive on port facilities receiving ship-generated wastes and cargo residues. With the complicity of environmental authorities at the Amsterdam port, the ship unloaded and reloaded its wastes, and continued to the Estonian port of Paldiski, where the residues were still not discharged. The logistics coordinator from Trafigura selected the Abidjan port as the final receptacle of these wastes. Certainly Abidjan’s financial conditions for reception are markedly more advantageous than those of Amsterdam, but elimination conditions there are also distinctly inferior, especially when cleaning and cargo residues contain thiol, hydrogen sulfide, and sodium hydroxide.

We demand that the Netherlands’s Ministry of the Environment obligate Trafigura without delay to take back these wastes and to treat them in the Netherlands, which they should have done in the month of July 2006.

See also:
Trafigura captured by Mercaptan and Hydrogen Sulphide. July 23, 2010.
Trafigura lies - Probo Koala and Trafigura's trial in Amsterdam. June 28, 2010
Probo Koala, the book. May 2010
Toxic wastes in Abidjan. Wastes returning to Europe, Nov 7, 2006
Ivory Coast Waste: Return to Sender, September 29, 2006.
Notice #4: Toxic wastes in the Ivory Coast and fires of repetition in France, September 19, 2006
Notice #3: French businessmen stuck in Abidjan’s toxic mixture, September 14, 2006.
Call for a waste charter, September 12, 2006.
Notice #1: Pollution in the Ivory Coast, September 10, 2006
For the whole story (only available in French):
http://www.robindesbois.org/dossiers/probo_koala/page_probo_koala.html