Tag Archives: illegal disposal of hazardous waste

The Dirty Environmental Tricks of Elon Musk

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Elon Musk made big promises to Wall Street about Tesla’s Model Y SUV in 2022, and the company was ramping up its production in Austin, Texas, when environmental problems threatened to derail his plans. The door to the plant’s giant casting furnace, which melts metal to be molded into the Model Y’s parts, wouldn’t shut, spewing toxins into the air and raising temperatures for workers on the floor to as high as 100 degrees. Hazardous wastewater from production—containing paint, oil and other chemicals—was also flowing untreated into the city’s sewer, in violation of state guidelines. Tesla left the costly problems largely unaddressed during the critical ramp-up. As a result, the company’s 10 million-plus square foot plant—among the largest car factories in the world—dumped toxic pollutants into the environment near Austin for months.

This account of the Austin plant’s environmental problems, which haven’t been reported previously, comes from emails between Texas regulators and the company obtained by The Wall Street Journal in response to public-records requests, as well as interviews with former employees and other documents, including a memo sent by a whistleblower to the Environmental Protection Agency….Former employees said they feared they might lose their job if they drew attention internally to potential environmental hazards, because senior managers didn’t consider such issues to be mission critical. As head of the company, Musk set the tone, these people said, pushing employees to move fast and complaining frequently in public statements that unnecessary regulations are strangling the U.S.

Musk is considered a champion of the environment for his role in pioneering the electric car industry. He has said the mission of Tesla, which is the largest maker of electric cars in the U.S., is to “protect life on Earth.” Yet across his business empire, Musk’s companies show a pattern of breaking environmental rules again and again, federal and state government filings and documents show.

Tesla’s Fremont, Calif., facility has accumulated more warnings for violations of air pollution rules over the past five years than almost any other company’s plant in California, according to a Journal analysis of informal enforcement actions in the EPA’s compliance database. It is second only to a refinery owned by oil-and-gas behemoth Chevron, which is in nearby Richmond.

In 2024, California regulators said Tesla violated air-pollution permits at its Fremont factory 112 times over the past five years and alleged it repeatedly failed to fix equipment designed to reduce emissions, releasing thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals in excess of permissible limits into the surrounding communities. “

Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, has also had run-ins with regulators in Texas and community pushback in Florida, including over the impact of its launches on local plants and animals. Federal regulators recently fined the company for dumping about 262,000 gallons of wastewater from launches into wetlands in Texas without a permit. SpaceX has denied the allegations. 

Excerpt from Susan Pulliam and Emily Glazer,  Musk Says He Wants to Save the Planet. Tesla’s Factories Are Making It Dirtier, WSJ, Nov. 25, 2024

Rich Environmental Criminals

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“The brutality and profit margins in the area of environmental crime are almost unimaginable. Cartels have taken over entire sectors of illegal mining, the timber trade and waste disposal,” according to Sasa Braun, intelligence officer with Interpol’s environmental security program  Braun listed examples. Villages in Peru that had resisted deforestation efforts had been razed to the ground by criminal gangs in retribution, he said, while illegal fishing fleets had thrown crew overboard to avoid having to pay them.

Environmental crime has many faces and includes the illegal wildlife trade, illegal logging, illegal waste disposal and the illegal discharge of pollutants into the atmosphere, water or soil. It is a lucrative business for transnational crime networks. Illegal waste trafficking, for example, accounts for $10 to 12 billion (€10.28 to 12.34 billion) annually, according to 2016 figures from the United Nations Environment Program. Criminal networks save on the costs of proper disposal and obtaining permits. For some crime networks, the profits from waste management are so huge that it has become more interesting than drug trafficking…The profits from illegal logging have also grown…

According to the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), environmental crime — the third most lucrative area of crime worldwide after drug trafficking and counterfeit goods — generates profits of between $110 billion and $280 billion each year.

Excerpts from Environmental crime: Profit can be higher than drug trade, DW, Oct. 16, 2022

Severe Marine Pollution Crime: Interpol

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A global operation led by INTERPOL that took place in 2019 involving 61 countries identified thousands of illicit activities behind severe marine pollution. Codenamed 30 Days at Sea 2.0, the month-long (1-31 October, 2019) operation gathered more than 200 enforcement authorities worldwide for concerted action across all continents.

Illustrating the severe global extent of marine pollution crime, preliminary operational results have already revealed more than 3,000 offences detected during 17,000 inspections. The offences – such as illegal discharges at sea, in rivers, or in coastal areas – were found to have been committed primarily to avoid the cost of compliance with environmental legislation.

As part of Operation 30 Days at Sea 2.0, INTERPOL hosted an Operational Command Centre (OCC) in Singapore to focus on the illegal trade in plastic waste, a key threat to marine environment security. The OCC brought key countries together to trigger investigations into cases of illegal export or import of plastic waste.​

The operation gathered more than 200 enforcement authorities worldwide, such as here in Bosnia and Herzegovina where officers inspect a company suspected of illegal discharge into local rivers
In Nigeria, INTERPOL’s National Central Bureau in Abuja coordinated the action of 18 authorities through a task force created to conduct inspections into illegal oil refineries, found responsible for severe oil leakages polluting the country’s waterways.  

Information exchanged between Malaysia and The Netherlands permitted authorities to identify the source country of seven containers of plastic waste being illegally shipped into Malaysia from Belgium via Hong Kong, and to initiate their repatriation.

Excerpts from Marine pollution: thousands of serious offences exposed in global operation, Interpol Press Release, Dec. 16, 2019

The Severe Extent of Marine Pollution Crime

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A global operation led by INTERPOL involving 61 countries and regional law enforcement partners has identified thousands of illicit activities behind severe marine pollution. Code-named 30 Days at Sea 2.0, the month-long (1-31 October, 2019) operation gathered more than 200 enforcement authorities worldwide for concerted action across all continents. Illustrating the severe global extent of marine pollution crime, preliminary operational results have already revealed more than 3,000 offences detected during 17,000 inspections. The offences – such as illegal discharges at sea, in rivers, or in coastal areas – were found to have been committed primarily to avoid the cost of compliance with environmental legislation.

The operation gathered more than 200 enforcement authorities worldwide, such as here in Bosnia and Herzegovina where officers inspect a company suspected of illegal discharge into local rivers
In Nigeria, INTERPOL’s National Central Bureau in Abuja coordinated the action of 18 authorities through a task force created to conduct inspections into illegal oil refineries, found responsible for severe oil leakages polluting the country’s waterways.   Information exchanged between Malaysia and The Netherlands permitted authorities to identify the source country of seven containers of plastic waste being illegally shipped into Malaysia from Belgium via Hong Kong, and to initiate their repatriation.

Marine pollution: thousands of serious offences exposed in global operation, Interpol Press Release, Dec. 16, 2019.

Illegal Waste from Canada to Philippines

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Fifty containers of Canadian garbage, including used adult diapers, have been languishing in the port of Manila in the Philippines for almost two years and setting off recent protests by environmental and public health activists.The activists, among them a Catholic priest, say the containers hold toxic and hazardous waste, although a recent study by Philippines officials suggests they’re simply stuffed with household garbage.

Late last year (2014), the Philippines government recommended the containers be returned to Canada under the provisions of the Basel Convention, which prohibits developed countries from shipping waste to developing nations.“The Basel Convention says, as a developed country, (Canada) cannot export waste,” Filipino environment secretary Ramon Paje said in a televised interview. “That would be considered as dumping.”…

A spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs (Canada) reiterated the government’s long-stated opinion that the case is a private commercial matter involving a Canadian company and its Philippines partner.….Chronic Inc., a plastics exporter based in Whitby, Ontario , shipped the containers — supposedly filled with recyclable Vancouver plastics — to the Philippines in the spring and summer of 2013. But upon inspection, the country’s Bureau of Customs found the containers were filled with stinking household garbage, including used adult diapers and kitchen waste.

The bureau said the material could “pose biohazard risks” and impounded the shipment.
Jim Makris, head of the Lee-Anne Goodmandenied last year that he shipped garbage to the Philippines….The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported in 2014 that the Bureau of Customs is investigating the 150-worker plant in Valenzuela City started by Makris to sort and sell the plastic he ships.

Excerpts from Lee-Anne Goodman, 50 containers of Canadian garbage rots in Manila for two years, Canadian Press, Mar. 20, 2015

Illegal Nuclear Imports – Lebanon

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Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has filed a lawsuit against merchants responsible for importing radioactive products into Lebanon, a judicial source told The Daily Star Thursday.  Berri filed the case with the State Prosecution on March 11, 2015, on behalf of himself as both a citizen of Lebanon and the speaker of Parliament, the source added.

The case targets those who participated “in the crime of importing radioactive products to Lebanon, which has negative effects on public health and the environment.”Berri requested that the locations of radioactive products be determined, the suspects detained and the material sent back to the source. State Prosecutor Judge Samir Hammoud tasked criminal investigators with carrying out the probe…

The move came after the local newspaper As-Safir reported that Defense Minister Samir Moqbel had made a decision to transform a  into a landfill for radioactive waste.  After Berri voiced his rejection to the plan, Army Commander Gen.Jean Kahwagi assured him that it would not go through.  The Secretary General of the National Council for Scientific Research Mouin Hamzeh also told As-Safir that the plan violated environmental laws, because the landfill would be close to touristic and residential areas….

As-Safir’s report also stated that “gangs and mafias” had been smuggling radioactive products from Syria and Iraq through illegal crossings on the Lebanese borders.

Excerpt, Lebanon speaker sues over radioactive imports, Daily Star, Mar. 12, 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has filed a lawsuit against merchants responsible for importing radioactive products into Lebanon, a judicial source told The Daily Star Thursday.  Berri filed the case with the State Prosecution on March 11, 2015, on behalf of himself as both a citizen of Lebanon and the speaker of Parliament, the source added.

The case targets those who participated “in the crime of importing radioactive products to Lebanon, which has negative effects on public health and the environment.”Berri requested that the locations of radioactive products be determined, the suspects detained and the material sent back to the source. State Prosecutor Judge Samir Hammoud tasked criminal investigators with carrying out the probe…

The move came after the local newspaper As-Safir reported that Defense Minister Samir Moqbel had made a decision to transform a  into a landfill for radioactive waste.  After Berri voiced his rejection to the plan, Army Commander Gen.Jean Kahwagi assured him that it would not go through.  The Secretary General of the National Council for Scientific Research Mouin Hamzeh also told As-Safir that the plan violated environmental laws, because the landfill would be close to touristic and residential areas….

As-Safir’s report also stated that “gangs and mafias” had been smuggling radioactive products from Syria and Iraq through illegal crossings on the Lebanese borders.

Excerpt, Lebanon speaker sues over radioactive imports, Daily Star, Mar. 12, 2015

Electronic Waste: 100 million tonnes 2020

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Exports of electronic waste or e-waste are banned in Europe, but remain legal in America. The United States is the only developed country that has refused to ratify the 1989 Basel Convention, an international treaty controlling the export of hazardous waste from wealthy countries to poorer ones. America has also refused, along with Canada and Japan, to accept the Basel Convention’s 1995 amendment that imposes an outright ban on such trade.

There have been repeated attempts in Congress to pass legislation that would make it illegal to send toxic waste to other countries. The Responsible Electronics Recycling Act of 2013 failed to gain a consensus. A similar act, introduced in March 2014, remains stuck in the Senate.

Not that the Europeans behave all that ethically. Inspections of 18 European seaports in 2005 found nearly half the e-waste destined for export was actually illegal. Shippers use various tricks to circumvent the Basel ban. For instance, waste labelled as goods for refurbishing or reuse can pass muster, even if it gets incinerated or dumped in landfills on arrival.

Chinese authorities tried, unsuccessfully, to put a stop to such false labeling back in 2000, by banning all imports of e-waste, whatever their intended use. Today, Guiyu, a city in Guangdong province, is the e-waste capital of the world. There, glass-to-glass recycling of computer monitors and television sets costs a tenth of what it does in America. Cathode-ray tubes, with their high concentrations of lead and chemically hazardous phosphors, are the most difficult of all e-waste to process. With an abundance of recycled glass from CRTs, China has become a leading exporter of bottles and jars.

The e-waste industry in Guiyu is said to employ 150,000 people, including large numbers of children, disassembling old computers, phones and other devices by hand to recover whatever metals and parts that can be resold. Circuit boards are soaked in acid to dissolve out the lead, cadmium and other metals. Plastic cases are ground into pellets, and copper wiring is stripped of its plastic coating. Anything not salvageable is burned.

The air pollution and contamination of the local water supply in Guiyu are said to be horrendous. A medical researcher from nearby Shantou University found concentrations of lead in the blood of local children to be on average 49% over the maximum safe level. The highest concentrations were in children living in homes with workshops for recycling circuit boards on the premises.

India is fast becoming another big dumping ground for Western e-waste. Greenpeace reckons there are 25,000 workers employed in recycling computers, phones and other hardware in Delhi alone, where up to 20,000 tonnes of e-waste are processed a year. The preferred method for recycling circuit boards is to toss them into an open fire—to melt the plastics and burn away everything but the gold and copper. Similar recycling dumps have been found in Mumbai, Bangalore and several other cities.

With the global mountain of e-waste growing bigger by 8% a year, the 20m-50m tonnes the EPA reckoned was produced globally in 2009 could easily reach 100m tonnes by 2020.

Excerpts from Where Gadgets Go to Die, Economist, Sept. 6, 2014, at 9

Organized Crime: rhino horn to waste dumping

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[A]ccording to America’s Congressional Research Services,  illegal trade
in endangered wildlife products is worth as much as $133 billion annually. Commodities such as rhino horn and caviar offer criminals two benefits rarely found together: high prices and low risk. Rhino horn can fetch up to $50,000 per kilogram, more than gold or the American street value of cocaine. Get caught bringing a kilogram of cocaine into America and you could face 40 years in prison and a $5m fine. On January 10th, by contrast, a New York court sentenced a rhino-horn trafficker to just 14 months…Organised crime is globalising and diversifying. Mono-ethnic, hierarchical mafias are being replaced by multi-ethnic networks that operate across borders and commit many types of offence. In an ongoing investigation into rhino-horn trafficking, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) arrested Irish travellers using indigent Texans to procure material for Chinese and Vietnamese buyers. Europol, the European Union’s law-enforcement agency, estimates that just a quarter of Europe’s roughly 3,600 organised-crime groups have a main nationality, and that some operate in dozens of countries. A third are involved in more than one criminal enterprise, with half of those linked to drug-trafficking.

And though traditional trafficking in drugs, guns and people is still lucrative, gangs are increasingly moving into lower-risk, higher-reward areas—not just wildlife, but fraud and illegal waste-disposal….Gangs in Britain make around £9 billion ($14.8 billion) a year from tax, benefit, excise-duty and other fraud—not much less than the £11 billion they earn from drugs. In America cigarette-trafficking deprives state, local and federal governments of $5 billion in tax revenues annually. The European Union estimates that losses within its borders from cigarette smuggling, tax fraud and false claims on its funds by organised groups total €34 billion ($46.5 billion) a year. But member states bring fewer than ten cases each a year for defrauding the EU, and sentences tend to be light.

According to the FLARE Network, an international group of campaigners against organised crime, criminal groups in Italy make around €14 billion a year from being mixed up in agriculture. In some parts of the country mafias control food production and distribution; Franco La Torre, FLARE’s president, says they also enrich themselves through fraudulent claims on EU agricultural funds. Increasingly strict regulation of waste disposal has created another profitable opportunity for organised crime in Europe—particularly, according to Europol, for the Italian Camorra, ’Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra…

Old-style loan sharks and drug-dealers are finding a new role as distributors for the modern mobsters who manage the supply chains, marketing, finance and human resources needed to move goods, money and people across borders. “The new generation are very talented businessmen and technologically advanced experts,” says Mr La Torre. They prefer invisibility to showy violence. Many also have legitimate business interests.  Clever criminals acting across borders are extremely difficult to prosecute. They profit from gaps in enforcement and regulation, and conceal their illegal acts in complex supply chains. If a network of Nigerian scammers based in Amsterdam defrauds French, Australian and American credit-card holders, where does the crime occur? And who has the motivation, not to mention the jurisdiction, to prosecute?

A commodity such as oil, ivory or fish will be transported on a ship flying a flag of convenience, explains Mr Leggett. The ship will be owned by a holding company registered in a tax haven with a phoney board. Thus the criminals can disguise the provenance of their ill-gotten goods and middlemen can plead ignorance….

Until then, illicit goods will keep coming in quantities too great for governments to stop. One FWS inspector estimates that for all the peering, prodding and chirping, for all the rewards promised and rhino-horn traffickers caught, the agency picks up perhaps 5% of wildlife brought illicitly into America. For criminals, that is merely a light tax on the profits from the rest.

Excerpts, Organised crime: Earning with the fish,Economist, Jan. 18, 2014, at 59

Illegal Dumping of Nuclear Waste: Turkey

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A lead factory in the Aegean province of İzmir has been fined for 5.7 million Turkish Liras ($2.9 million) over allegations of burying high levels of radioactive waste in the land.  The penalty imposed on Aslan Avcı Casting Industry lead factory is the highest environment fine imposed in Turkey to date, Environment and Urban Planning official Mehmet Emin Birpınar told Anadolu Agency Oct. 28.

The site was brought to public attention when reports of the burying of radioactive waste under the ground surfaced, with over 10,000 tons of earth being placed on top of the waste.  The radioactivity levels called for proper containment of the waste, however, despite later reports by Turkey’s Atomic Energy Commission (TAEK), assuring normal levels of radioactivity in the area, the controversy continued to generate public debate.  Recently, new reports have emerged saying the color of the land covering the waste was becoming black, suggesting the radioactive wastes’ continuing to spread in environment through wind and rainfall.

Record fine imposed for radioactive waste burial in Turkey’s Aegean district, Hurriyet Daily News, Oct. 28, 2013

How nuclear waste accumulated in the factory? “Prof. Tolga Yarman from Okan University Faculty of Engineering explains the case: “This product is a nucleus called Europium 152 isotope. It is difficult to understand how this element can be found in Turkey. This is the major question. This product cannot be here just by itself; it must have come with other waste materials, especially with nuclear rods. But why and how can nuclear rods be here in Turkey? Who brought them? This is what we need to know. In addition, what did they melt in the factory together with the waste? They say it was unintentional, but it does not seem possible. This means that it is possible to imagine that the factory used radioactive material for its production. In that case, it is necessary to take under surveillance the production process. We are also facing a potential hazard caused by the products distributed from that company. We should immediately test some of the batteries produced in that factory.”