Everybody known how green Sweden is. Year after year, it is ranked one of the greenest — if not the greenest — countries out there. Of course, depending on the method the greenness is calculated, but still. Very green. For example, it would be unthinkable for a reputable Swedish company to dump their toxic waste “negative value material” some 250 metres from the residential area. Unthinkable.
Another matter is to send it as far as possible, say to South America, and hope that everybody forgets about that. Completely different story.
And this is exactly what happened in the 1980s. The Swedish mining giant Boliden AB, “a metals company with focus on sustainable development”, has shipped about 20,000 tons of smelter sludge containing high concentrations of arsenic, mercury, cadmium and lead, to Arica in northern Chile. The sobering Swedish documentary, the follow-ip to Toxic Playground (2010), makes sure that the story and Arica victims are not forgotten.
So, Boliden. The company I never heard about before, even though I should have. My first association upon watching the film was the fictional Cryolite Corporation from Smilla’s Sense of Snow. To quote one of the characters of the novel,
no one has ever had reason to complain about the corporation’s generosity or openness. And whatever complaints there were have been rectified.
In the spirit of openness, no doubt, Boliden published their version of events, in the “Sustainability” section, which includes a press-release titled “One-sided and misleading film about Boliden’s exports to Chile” as well as “the entire correspondence” between Boliden and United Nations Human Rights Committee, viz. a UNHR letter and Boliden response; two letters in total.
Closer home, Boliden-owned Los Frailes mine, near Aznalcóllar, was the site of Doñana disaster, the worst environmental accident in Spain. 24 years later, Boliden are not in a hurry to pay either, probably expecting that eventually a friendly court will find the claims “time barred”, as it happened in case of Arica.
The screening of the first Documental del Mes this year, in Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Tenerife and La Palma, was organised by Filmoteca Canaria.
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