Global Sludge Ends in Tragedy for Ivory Coast

When a tanker leased by Trafigura, a multinational oil and metal trading company, docked in Amsterdam and hired the Amsterdam Port Services (APS) to process the waste it was carrying, the toxic sludge was found to be hazardous. Refusing to pay the high price asked by the APS to dispose of the material, the tanker took the waste back on board. Several weeks later, the tanker arrived at Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast, and soon after, people began getting sick. Trafigura apparently hired an Ivorian company to dispose of the waste, despite explicit evidence that the firm could not handle the operations necessary to safely handle the toxic material. Though the government of Ivory Coast at first denied that anything was amiss, eight people have since died and 85,000 have sought medical attention. The worst contamination has occurred in largely poverty-stricken areas, and the fallout has shaken the political stability of a country not yet recovered from civil war. Though Greenpeace has launched several lawsuits, the shameless bucking of responsibility which allowed the contamination to occur in the first place makes it difficult to predict their outcome. Meanwhile, residents of the Ivory Coast are victims of global trade that has run out of control, treating poor countries as a dumping ground for the world’s waste. – YaleGlobal