Australian Company's Toxic Waste Dumping Breaches International Law

Saturday 16 November 2002

Australian company Rio Tinto’s gold mining operation in Lihir, Papua New Guinea has been under scrutiny by the Secretariat of the London Convention for dumping toxic waste at sea.

Greenpeace with the help of the Mineral Policy Institute brought the case before the annual meeting of the Convention this week. The meeting is asking the Papua New Guinea government to explain why this mine is being allowed to dump waste into the sea.

"Both Australia and Papua New Guinea are signatories to the London Convention, which bans the dumping of toxic waste at sea and Australia must take responsibility for the operations of the mine," said Simon Divecha from the Mineral Policy Institute.

"It was only through providing insurance from the Australian government export credit agency (EFIC) that Rio Tinto was even able to finance the mine in 1997."

During the life of the mine it will dump 330 million tonnes of waste into the ocean, in an area described by ecological studies as one of the richest areas of marine biodiversity on earth. The mine is expected to operate for 37 years producing 20 million ounces of gold.

"This is a sea dumping version of BHP Billiton's operations at Ok Tedi. The Australian government should act to ensure that Australian listed mining companies cannot break international law, even if they do it overseas," said Divecha.

Contacts:

Mineral Policy Institute, Simon Divecha, advocacy@mpi.org.au, mo: 0428 775 540
Greenpeace International Science Officer and London Convention representative, David Santillo d.santillo@ex.ac.uk Ph: +44-1392-263917
Greenpeace media officer Carolin Wenzel ph: (02) 9263 0358 mo: 0417 668 957
Greenpeace toxics campaigner, Sue Connor ph: 0011 64 212 724 044