Environmental dumping
[2] An example of an attempt at environmental dumping is the story of the decommissioned French aircraft carrier, the FS Clemenceau, which was originally sold to a ship breaking yard in Gujarat India to be demolished and recycled as scrap.
In 2007, it is estimated that OECD countries exported between 4 and 5 million tons of metal and paper waste.
During the years of 1970 and 1980 alone, it was estimated that 25 million tons of waste including scrap metal, chemicals, and acids were dumped into the ocean.
Ocean dumping can lead to eutrophication which depletes the oxygen from the water, in turn killing marine life.
E-waste, such as computers, cannot be shipped to countries that are not in the EU or the European Free Trade Association.
International Maritime Organization states that India is the leader in ship dismantling, followed by China, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
[11] The European Council's Conclusions endorse the Hong Kong Convention on environmentally responsible ship recycling, adopted in May 2009.
[12] According to the International Maritime Organization, he Hong Kong Convention “intends to address all the issues around ship recycling, including the fact that ships sold for scrapping may contain environmentally hazardous substances such as asbestos, heavy metals, hydrocarbons, ozone-depleting substances and others.
It also addresses concerns raised about the working and environmental conditions at many of the world's ship recycling locations.”[13] recycling is very important when it comes to recycling devices In the context of refrigeration and air conditioning equipment, increasingly necessary in a warming world, environmental dumping includes: “1) export of technology that cannot legally be sold in the country of export as a consequence of failure to meet environmental, safety, energy efficiency, or other product standards; and 2) export of technology that is unusable in the country of export because refrigerants are no longer available because of national regulation or phaseout and phasedown control schedules under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer”.
In contrast, the Montreal Protocol is designed to top-down phaseout the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) – such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs, halons, hydrofluorocarbons (HCFCs), and methyl bromide; and phasedown the production and consumption of ozone-safe hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).
[14] Environmental dumping especially hinders attempts under the Montreal Protocol to control ozone-depleting and climate-forcing chemical substances and/or products requiring unnecessarily high energy consumption.
While developing country Parties to the Montreal Protocol are allowed to delay their phasedown of climate-forcing and ozone-depleting hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) during a multi-year grace period consistent with the principal of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, there are advantages to earlier implementation when superior alternatives are already available at reasonable costs, as is the case for many uses of HFCs today.
Decision XXXIV/4 invites parties that have restricted the manufacture and/or import of certain refrigeration, air-conditioning and heat pump products and equipment containing or relying on controlled substances, including with respect to energy efficiency, and that do not want to receive such products and equipment from other parties against payment or free of charge, to submit specific information to the Secretariat of the Montreal Protocol for discussion and consideration at the Forty-Fifth Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) and Thirty-Fifth Meeting of the Parties (MOP) in 2023.
[15] These decisions set the stage for further deliberation of and future decisions on the topic of preventing environmental dumping of inefficient cooling equipment containing or using high-GWP refrigerants with the ambition is to open markets to superior cooling appliances with savings in electricity cost spent locally.
