Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 4: The toxic cradle of productionSasol’s SDR leaves out the mountains of ash produced each year, previously reportedat over 10 million tonnes in Secunda and 1.8 mt in Sasolburg. This is because Sasolis now ‘recycling’ its ash by selling it off to brick makers. The Sasolburg SH&Ereports just short of 1.6 mt ash sold in 2006. This figure includes ash mined from itsold dumps. The ash contains various toxic residues, including heavy metals such asmercury, that leach from the dumps and into water so recycling this ash should resultin local environmental benefits. Nevertheless, the toxic residues will remain in thebricks. They are therefore dispersed into the built environment and will be releasedover time: eventually the bricks will crumble or be crushed as buildings are demolishedor paving is ripped up.Sasol is now also selling spent catalyst and waste waxes to clay brick makers. Thiscontributed to a substantial reduction in hazardous waste from its Sasol One site from14,851 tonnes in 2005 to 4,257 tonnes in 2006. The corporation makes no commenton the final fate of the toxic material. As with ash bricks, however, this is effectively astrategy of dispersing toxic waste in space and time.Catalysts are used to create chemical reactions in both the refining and chemicalsindustries. In oil refineries, catalysts ‘crack’ heavy fuel oil to produce a higherproportion of more valuable light elements such as petrol or diesel. In Sasol’s process,catalysts react with ‘syngas’ to produce synfuels and a variety of chemicals. The catalystis designed for specific processes but generally composed of grains of metal oxidecoated with other metals. Commonly used minerals include iron, aluminium, nickel,cobalt, vanadium and potassium. In production, the catalyst is contaminated and isconstantly regenerated until it is degraded beyond use. Waste catalyst is choked withheavy metals and highly toxic.Sasol’s Natref refinery is now disposing of its waste catalyst to recently established wasterecycling companies for export “to companies abroad for metal recovery and finaltreatment” [SH&E 2005: 7]. This has reduced the refinery’s toxic waste from 4,000to 880 tonnes a year. In so far as the metals are recovered, this is likely to result fromthe commodity boom creating high metal prices. A sharp drop in metal markets, as isnow happening, may collapse such enterprises and so return the problem to Sasol – orleave it at sea. It should also be recalled that toxic metal recovery has a poor record aswas demonstrated at Thor Chemicals [see Chapter 3]. The problem of toxic waste maytherefore be transferred to the workers in the foreign metal recovery factories. Giventhe documented experience of IT recycling, if the destination is another Southerncountry it is possible that a proportion of the waste is simply dumped on arrival.- 106 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation