Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-20-Speech-2-503"
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"en.20080520.35.2-503"2
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".
Mr President, I want to thank Mr Papadimoulis for facilitating good cooperation. I also think that cooperation with the Council went well, although we had disagreements over content.
We must first note that mercury is a toxic and dangerous heavy metal. To begin with, some criticism. I think that it odd that, while we ban the export of hazardous waste and ourselves practically cease to use mercury at all, we seek to delay an export ban so that industry has time to run down its stocks before it is defined as waste. It is a hazardous chemical which we know will be dispersed in nature by gold washers and which will destroy the environment in other countries. I actually wanted a much earlier date for the ban to take effect.
But a compromise is a compromise. I can instead be glad that the voluntary measures of the industry are now included in the legislation, so that they will actually be implemented, and that all the necessary adjuncts will be covered by the export ban, for example cinnabar, oxides and calomel. In that way we have at least got a comprehensive piece of legislation.
As regards how we are to deal with the waste, we are talking about quite small quantities. Imagine 10 000 tonnes of liquid mercury. It would not take up much room, in fact it would fit in the space here in front of the podium – it corresponds to a volume of 10 cubic metres. No more than that. Yet it is a huge amount of mercury. Many molecules, in fact. We must not release a single one of them into the environment. The only way of actually implementing the EU’s waste legislation is not to dump mercury for permanent disposal in liquid form. For my Group, therefore, Article 7 was crucial to a resolution of the matter, in other words the article in which we are to return to the question of waste solidification. We cannot achieve any permanent disposal without looking again at that method. I was gratified today to receive an e-mail from a Swedish waste organisation (
) which says that a pilot plant is now being constructed that can already handle 500 kg of waste and convert it to insoluble, solid form. When we return to the matter in 2010, I can guarantee that disposal in solid form will be a safe method which complies with the EU legislation."@en1
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"det svenska avfallsbolaget"1
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