Photo credit: Global Environment Facility
The Lito SAS industrial waste management facility is located just 20 minutes from the Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP16 in Cali, Colombia, and the work underway there is directly relevant to the biodiversity goals that world leaders, environment ministers, and negotiators are focused on down the road.
The processing plant in one of the largest industrial zones in Colombia specializes in handling electrics and industrial equipment, including electrical transformers. Inside, machines and workers separate and recycle valuable materials such as aluminum, copper, oil, and plastic, and safely dispose the non-recyclable parts.
Power transformers need extra care because they can contain hazardous chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls – PCBs. These are potential pollutants that can build up in the environment and in living beings, requiring sound management and disposal practices, which is why they are controlled by a legally binding international agreement called the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.
Tucked inside Lito’s bustling workspace is a small lab, where scientists wear protective gear and use specialized equipment to make sure that hazardous chemicals are not released through the repurposing process. Because of this step, the Lito plant can safely break down and separate metals and other components, re-introducing the feathery shards as primary materials in value chains.
“This laboratory is an important part of the whole process because we need to identify where the PCB is, and also at what levels,” Rolph Payet, Executive Secretary of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, said on a visit to the site during COP16.
Lito has participated in two Global Environment Facility-funded, UN Development Programme-managed projects focused on PCB waste treatment and disposal, helping build up its technical capacity to identify and properly treat contaminated waste. It is also implementing a pilot project to eliminate PCBs using supercritical oxidation technology, an advanced chemical process that avoids emissions of toxic pollutants and can achieve the total destruction of hazardous waste materials.
This is difficult work, and it is also yielding results.
“The Global Monitoring Plan has shown that the efforts that we've been doing in the destruction and removal of PCBs from the environment has been positive. In fact, we've seen a downward trend over the last 10 years or so in the levels of PCBs on the planet,” said Payet, a former environment and energy minister from the Seychelles. “The Convention is working. GEF resources are also working and helping us move towards effective elimination of PCBs.”
Colombia is among the countries striving to meet the Stockholm Convention requirement to stop the use of PCBs by 2025 and ensure the environmentally sound waste management of PCB-contaminated equipment and oils by 2028. In so doing, they are helping to reduce the exposure of people, animals, and plants to toxins that can bio-accumulate or build up.
GEF CEO Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, on a tour of the site, stressed the important role of the private sector in partnership with national authorities and international organizations to address the complex task of industrial waste processing, and the safe capturing, storage, treatment, and disposal of hazardous substances.
“We often think of climate change as the largest environmental problem. But it is not. It is pollution, and particularly pollution by hazardous chemicals in the agricultural, industrial, and other sectors,” said Rodriguez, a former environment and energy minister from Costa Rica. “The nexus of dealing with implementation of the chemicals conventions, including the Stockholm Convention and the Minamata Convention on mercury, with the biodiversity convention is extremely important.”
