Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Protest Against Ban on Scrap Exports

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CARACAS, Oct 10 2005 (IPS) - Hundreds of workers at recycling companies protested Oct. 3 outside the Venezuelan Parliament against a government decree that banned the export of ferrous and non-ferrous scrap. This “affects more than a thousand small companies, which employ 16,000 people,” said Jorge Morales, spokesman for their umbrella association, Remefynof.

Another 70,000 people, especially informal collectors of metallic waste, make their living indirectly from the exports, Morales said in a Tierramérica interview.

The government ban, in force since Sep. 13, “in addition to economically hurting the recycling sector, is harmful to the environment, because it notably increases the garbage left in the streets.”

In 2002 Venezuela generated 18,600 tons of waste daily, of which only 20 percent was recycled, according to the non-governmental group Vitalis.