Umweltverbrechen multinationaler Konzerne - Greenpeace

Legal and/or public
action taken
Subsequent
behaviour of company
76 Greenpeace, Solvay/Brasil
77 Gazeta Mercantil, 26/3/1999
78 Greenpeace – Solvay/Brasil
from the market. After the discovery, German authorities
investigated the source of contamination and concluded that cattle
feed was tainted with high levels of dioxins. Six components of the
feed were analysed separately and the citrus pulp pellets from Brazil
were isolated as being the source. In April 1998, after the halt in the
use of Brazilian citrus pulp pellets by Germany, the European
Economic Community banned the import of the Brazilian product.
In order to evaluate the loss that this ban caused to Brazil, one
should remember that in 1997 alone over 1.3 million tons of citrus
pulp were shipped from the Santos Harbour. At the time of the ban,
there were 94,900 tons of citrus pulp and 11 thousand tons of feed
containing Brazilian pellets in Europe 76 .
Because of the ban, Brazilian producers lost at least BRL 100 million
(USD 40 million), according to the Brazilian Association of Citrus
Exporters (Abecitrus, Associação Brasileira de Exportadores de
Cítricos). They weren’t the only ones who suffered economic loss-were
spent 40 thousand tons of contaminated pulp stored in the
Netherlands were destroyed at a price of USD 6 million.
In 1998, as it reconsidered importing Brazilian pulp, the European
Commission required a complete investigation on the origin of the
contamination and a guarantee that such contamination would be
eliminated. The investigation, carried out by the Department of
Agriculture, Abecitrus and European scientists indicated Solvay’s
storage site in Santo André as the origin of the contamination.
Four months before the lime deposit was discovered, Greenpeace
had addressed the same Solvay facility for containing
organochlorines. In December 1998, Greenpeace made accusations
of the presence of mercury and organochlorines in the Rio Grande
river, which crosses the Santo André facility. This accusation, which
was rejected by CETESB (State Environmental Agency), is being
investigated by the Public Prosecutor 77 . The 3 rd Consumers Police
Department of São Paulo has opened a criminal investigation of the
two cases.
There has been no investigation into the possibility that other areas
in Brazil are contaminated by the dioxin-tainted lime marketed by the
Carbotex and by Minercal, another company that collected wastes
from the Santo André storage site 78 .
In April 2002, over 200 local community members and students from
the ABC Paulista region participated in a parade against the
contamination by the company.
When Greenpeace brought the case to public attention, Solvay
stated that they would do everything required by CETESB as soon
as they were notified of the contamination and that they had already
interrupted the losses of their lime in the middle of 1998. Rogério
Fragale, industrial director of Solvay, also stated that there was no
proof that the pulp exported to Europe had been contaminated by
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