Serial Entrepreneurs

 - Cletus Olebune

            courtesy of nel-mag.org

    While this article is not a direct indictment to the manufacturing industry’s environmental release of toxic waste by manufacturing companies, it proposes for a well documentation of toxic release for easy monitoring depending on the volume and types of toxic releases. Advocating for manufacturing as a driver of economic growth requires also a foresighted strategy that all manufacturing businesses possessing toxic substances to annually itemize their releases into the environment.

A monitoring system that would allow only manufacturing companies with fewer than 500 pounds of non-PBT (persistent, bio-accumulative, and toxic) release be permitted to abbreviated documentation as per toxic chemical groups. While this system may extend exemption to non-PBT releases 10 times that weight and also to companies with zero PBT release, it would allow for proper utilization of regulatory agency small workforce, reducing the administrative burden and direct resources to proper management of heavily toxic generating manufacturing companies.

Most people see manufacturing waste as the clear enemy in environmental pollution, we should be mindful of the disposal of used manufactured products, such as computers – both Macs and PCs contain hazardous materials. Nigeria is always referenced in the global disposal of used unserviceable computers; recently “Real Story” — a BBC program referenced Nigeria as one of developing countries with unregulated landfills.

The economic upside of manufacturing under free market conditions as employment generating strategy also has an environmental downside as seen in pollutions. As individuals, we try to get as much education as we want to better our economic position by acquiring certain amount of salaries in return for our years of commitment in college educations, but the environment benefits more than our individual anticipated returns. This is because, a better educated public are more creative, efficient, hard working, and when all is put together, a bigger pie is made beyond the individual initial anticipated returns. Synonymously, each manufacturing company see little in their manufacturing waste, the reality becomes that as we advocate for a manufacturing economy and with increased manufacturing plants, individual manufacturing plant contribution to the environmental pollution, we are going to end up with a bigger pie that negatively benefits all. The combination of these external economic and external diseconomies needs balancing, so that our air, water, and land space is free from toxic waste and dumps. 

We should all come away from the concept of “Away”; there is nothing like “away” or a place called “away” in the disposal of manufacturing wastes or manufactured used products – electronics and other non-biodegradable products. Anything thrown “away” finds a way of coming back to us; the goal should be towards a better management of wastes in a shape or form. In order not to make the atmosphere and the environment free dumping grounds, manufacturers must be made to account on how their wastes are disposed, even if they have to internalize the environmental social cost into the cost of manufacturing goods. I am sure the public would rather pay a little for the goods, than have manufacturing wastes released into the environment, for better healthy environment.

Maintaining a highly manufacturing economy requires that manufactures recuperate enough to remain competitive by efficient production and pricing decisions in cost of production, both direct production costs and social costs. Recognizing the neighborhood effects of pollution due to manufacturing; the cost-benefit of determining amount of environmental cleanup through emission taxation, seems the best strategy in ensuring that manufacturers are liable to the amount of waste they put out into the environment. This emissions trading and carbon taxes solution strategy will ensure that damage done to individuals who have no direct economic stake in the polluting actions and who are in no position to exercise voluntary control over the effects of pollution are compensated through emission taxation. There is no question whether manufacturers must account for releases they allow into the atmosphere; the objective is simply to develop a policy that will make manufacturers to internalize all of their cleanup costs into production decisions. Determination of the national air quality, motor vehicle and manufacturing plants emission standards, as well as proper disposal of used technological products such as computer and cell phone will help in the general monitoring of manufacturing wastes.

Negotiation of emission cost between polluters and damaged parties, where one person’s property rights are clearly damaged by a manufacturer’s polluting – a city’s or village’s loss of its water supply, farmland or added costs directly as a result of identifiable polluter. Given recourse to the rules and regulations, the damaged party may sue for damages. This will give incentive to the polluter to clean up its emission, as well as allow the parties to sit down and bargain for fees that reflects the parties’ balancing of benefits and costs. Repairing the neighborhood effects of manufacturing pollution will need the levying an emissions tax. The tax as a levy on the manufacturing companies should equal the amount of damage a particular manufacturing company is causing. This internalized cost of production will encourage production companies to clean up their production waste emissions in their efforts to reducing their tax burden. Companies that do not properly manage the reduction of their emission waste will be hit with appropriate tax.

There may be difficulties in setting or determining the extent of damages or clear property rights, but the concept is to allow polluters pay as to the extent of their externalities. If you pollute more, you pay more; if you pollute less, you pay less. With technical program systems, extent of damage could be determined, and amount of individual manufacturing company’s emissions translated into monetary value for proper taxing. Using emission permits and technical systems, a scientific determination of the environment’s capacity to absorb pollutants over a given area would be determined. This would be the ideal strategic solution procedure, as areas with heavy manufacturing activities will experience more damages, allowing municipal communities or states to better utilize the emission tax, rather than a federated strategy.

As NEL advocates for a manufacturing economy as a means of economic growth and job creation, we are mindful of the environmental issues associated with manufacturing waste. Therefore, the essence of this article is to bring awareness that, there is no such a thing as “Away.” Whatever is disposed comes full circle right back to us. Manufacturing should go hand-in-hand with managing manufacturing waste – intermediates and finished products.

All intentioned programs to reduce manufacturing waste should be a vision for manufacturing companies. As a society entrenched in consumption – a myopic and self-centered pastime practice, we should hold manufacturers accountable for environmental damages. It is the duty of the consumers to remind manufacturers that we are not just economic bundles of desire for this and that product, but as human beings, we have environmental concerns that is dear to our heart.

In conclusion, as we advocate for manufacturing economy, and believing that manufacturing should shape the future of Nigeria’s economy, manufacturing companies have a social responsibility to the management of manufacturing waste.

Although, the focus of the above article is on locally generated manufacturing waste, I will be remiss to the fact that we all live in a global economic competitive world, and therefore the effects of manufacturing generated waste in one part of the world is not always localized.

Recently, there have been reports of waste exportation into African countries by the Western countries, who in their efforts to limit waste in their countries, shipped toxic generating used products to developing countries. As I also involve myself in the waste management business, I clearly understand that countries ship waste to other countries, but these shipments are monitored and documented. For instant, wastes – hazardous and non-hazardous are shipped to Canada from the United States of America, and same from Canada to USA. Also, there is inter-states waste shipment among USA states, but the important thing here is monitoring. Last September, the U.S House of Representatives passed a bill to prevent Canadian trash from being landfilled in Michigan, but considering both countries memberships in NAFTA and the U.S.-Canada agreement on transboundary waste shipments, this bill will definitely face legal obstacle. Being good global neighbors, we should not throw trash in another person’s yard, unless the person gives his or her permission and is in a position to reciprocate with his or her own trash without complaint.

In a recent article, Meers Selva, a UK based writer for Independent newspaper carried this headline: “How Western Toxic Rubbish Is Destroying Africa!” Here is excerpt from the article:

“One August morning, people living near the Akouedo rubbish dump in Abidjan, capital of the Ivory Coast, woke up to a foul-smelling air. Soon, they began to vomit, children got diarrhoea, and the elderly found it difficult to breathe. "The smell was unbelievable, a cross between rotten eggs and blocked drains," said one Abidjan resident. "After 10 minutes in the thick of it, I felt sick."

As they live near the biggest landfill in Abidjan, the people of Akouedo are used to having rubbish dumped on their doorstep. Trucks unload broken glass, rotting food and used syringes. Children try to make the best of their dismal playground, looking for scraps of metal and old clothes to sell for a few cents.

But this time, the waste would benefit no one. By yesterday, at least six people, including two children, had died from the fumes. Another 15,000 have sought treatment for nausea, vomiting and headaches, queuing for hours at hastily set up clinics. Pharmacies have run out of medicines and the World Health Organization has sent emergency supplies to help the health system. The Ivorian government had resigned over the matter and, so far, eight people have been arrested.

The tragedy is said to have begun on 19 August, after a ship chartered by a Dutch company offloaded 400 tons of gasoline, water and caustic washings used to clean oil drums. The cargo was dumped at Akouedo and at least 10 other sites around the city, including in a channel leading to a lake, roadsides and open grounds.

The liquids began to send up fumes of hydrogen sulphide, petroleum distillates and sodium hydroxides across the city. As the tidy-up operation begins, environmental groups have begun to ask how this occurred.

"We thought the days when companies shipped toxic waste to poor countries were over," said Helen Perivier, toxics co-coordinator for Greenpeace. "It peaked in the 1980s but since then the determination of African countries to stamp the trade out has helped yield results. That this has happened again is extraordinary."

Probo Koala, the ship that offloaded the waste, is registered in Panama and chartered by the Dutch trading company Trafigura Beheer. Trafigura had tried to offload its slops in Amsterdam, but the Amsterdam Port Services recognized its contents as toxic and asked to renegotiate terms. Trafigura said shipping delays would mean penalties of at least 250,000 US dollars (£133,000) so handed it over to a disposal company in Abidjan alongside a "written request that the material should be safely disposed of, according to country laws, and with all the correct documentation."

This story is a common one. All down the West Africa coast, ships registered in America and Europe unload containers filled with old computers, slops, and used medical equipment. Scrap merchants, corrupt politicians and underpaid civil servants take charge of this rubbish and, for a few dollars, will dump them off coastlines and on landfill sites.

Throughout the 1980s, Africa was Europe's most popular dumping ground, with radioactive waste and toxic chemicals foisted on landowners. In 1987 an Italian ship dumped a load of waste on Koko Beach, Nigeria. Workers who came into contact with it suffered from chemical burns and partial paralysis, and began to vomit blood.

Thereafter, the UN drew up plans to regulate the trade in hazardous waste through the Basel Convention. By 1998, the European Union had agreed to implement the ban, which prohibited the export of hazardous wastes from developed countries to the developing world, but the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand refused to sign up; global waterways are still filled with ships looking to unload their toxic waste.

And now, there is a new threat - the dumping of electronic waste, or e-waste: unwanted mobile phones, computers and printers, which contain cadmium, lead, mercury and other poisons.”


Cletus E. Olebunne

Executive Director

NEL

December 2006

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Together we can build a nation where its economic strength is comparable to its individual citizen's capabilities. A 2020 Nigeria economy where manufacturing is the driving force. We are always glad to hear from you. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cletus E. Olebunne, Is the Executive Director of Nigerian Entrepreneurial Leadership (www.nel-m.org ) An accomplished scientist, and entrepreneur in the global healthcare product distribution. He is the founder of Eastern Pharmaceuticals (www.easternpharmaceuticals.com), a global distributor of healthcare products based in New Jersey. An active member of Regulatory Affairs Professional Society (RAPS), the global pharmaceutical regulatory body, the American Chemical Society, and the American Management Association (AMA).
The NEL organization seeks to:
1 Support and promote a community of entrepreneurs
2 Promote public understanding of manufacturing entrepreneurship
3 Promote and enhance the role models that reflect the ideals of manufacturing entrepreneurship
4 Be the source for information about best practices in business leadership.