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Toxic waste sent from Albania to Thailand/Cargo ships will return to Europe

2024-08-14 09:23:00, Aktualitet CNA

Thailand-bound shipping containers filled with tons of hazardous industrial waste from Albania are now scheduled to return to Europe after environmental groups warned they were being illegally exported to Southeast Asia.

An AP Moller-Maersk A/S vessel carrying 40 containers of hazardous waste will arrive in Singapore tomorrow and the suspected cargo will then be sent back to Italy, according to MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company's cargo tracking website SA, which will transport the cargo back to Europe.

Maersk is working with Singaporean authorities and the shipping line for which it is transporting the containers "to ensure that the containers will be returned to Albania in the best possible way," spokeswoman Summer Shi said.

Another 60 containers of suspected waste currently aboard the Maersk Candor, which is due in Singapore later this month, will also be returned to Europe, Shi said.

Officials have been working to stop the shipment since the Basel Action Network, a US-based nonprofit that tracks the toxic trade, last week informed Thailand that containers it believes are filled with potentially harmful electric arc furnace dust are they went towards her.

MSC and Albanian authorities did not respond to requests for comment, while Singaporean authorities said they were unable to comment yet. Maersk said none of the containers had been declared to contain hazardous waste, otherwise it would have refused to transport them. Bloomberg News could not independently verify what the ships were carrying. The companies exporting and receiving the containers have not been identified.

The Maersk Campton, which had switched off the transmission of its location, is now indicating its location and sailing through the Straits of Malacca. Maersk said the ship had stopped broadcasting its location while it was near Cape Town in South Africa due to security concerns in the region.

Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries have seen an influx of waste from developed countries, from polluted plastics to industrial and electronic waste, which can be laden with toxins. According to the United Nations Basel Convention, a global pact signed by many developed economies, countries must consent to waste going their way.

Thai authorities are still communicating with other foreign officials responsible for monitoring the shipment, according to an official at the Department of Industrial Affairs. Thailand will block and not allow hazardous waste to be transported into the country, she said.

The Basel Action Network, which has previously alerted Malaysia to illegal e-waste shipments, called for the shipments to be returned to Albania and for the traders involved to be punished.

"It is essential that governments fulfill their respective duties under the rules of the Basel Convention," said Executive Director Jim Puckett. "It is clear that it is very easy for traders and industry to simply load containers with materials that would otherwise cost a lot to be properly treated - whether it's plastic waste, e-waste, or toxic dust from steel mills."

The Basel Action Network, along with the environmental group Ecological Alert and Recovery-Thailand, alerted many countries when they learned that more than 800 tons of electric arc furnace dust was being transported by Maersk and MSC container ships. The cargo was loaded from the port of Durrës in July and would arrive in Thailand as the final destination.

Furnace dust, which requires treatment, is a hazardous waste product that typically comes from steel scrap recycling and contains toxic metal oxides such as cadmium and chromium that are harmful to health and the environment./ CNA