POPs IN AFRICA HAZARDOUS WASTE TRADE 1980 - 2000 ... - Arte

According to James de Vita, the U.S. prosecuting attorney in the
Zimbabwe case, in early 1983 the Colberts purchased bacteriainfected
personal hygiene products, including toothpaste,
claiming that they could “sell the material to overseas purchasers
in Third World countries.”
They also shipped chemical waste to a corporation known as
Kuwait Sponge again misrepresenting the waste as virgin
chemicals. Similarly, in 1979, the Colberts sent scrap industrial
polyvinyl chloride resins to India.
When the Colberts could not find a company in the developing
world to take the wastes that they had obtained from U.S.
industry and government agencies, they simply abandoned the
wastes in over 20 warehouses across the U.S., often in heavily
populated areas.
In 1984 a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report found
that the Colberts’ abandoned wastes were often “leaking
copiously, creating a serious risk of chemical reaction, fire and
the generation of toxic fumes.”
According to de Vita, the Colberts operating method “is, thus,
obvious. They selected that portion of the hazardous waste they
could pawn off on foreign customers and abandoned the balance.
They expected to get away with fraud relying on their Third
World customers’ supposed ignorance, distance, the dilatory
tactics of their attorneys, and frequent changes of the corporate
names under which they did business.”
According to Charles L. Brieant, the federal judge who heard the
Colbert case, “This case involves two well educated people,
having no remorse [involved] in a crime motivated by greed. It
is part of a continuous course involving dealing in hazardous
materials. Essentially the Court is faced here with a rather serious
two-man crime wave and [it] believes...that the case requires
specific deterrence as well as a sentence which will express
society’s disapproval of what was done here.”
The Colberts are now serving 13-year prison terms in a medium
security federal penitentiary in New Jersey. All attempts at
appeal have failed. They have filed a lawsuit against the U.S.
government charging, among other things, “cruel and unusual
punishment.” To date, 12,485 gallons of U.S. hazardous waste
remain in the abandoned mine shaft in Zimbabwe. 237
Obsolete Pesticides: In Zimbabwe there are 27 tonnes of obsolete pesticides. 238
237U.S. vs. Colbert, Case Number CR-85-01134-01, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York; Conversation with U.S. Information Service Bureau in Harare, Zimbabwe,
January 24, 1989.
238 FAO 2001
118