ENVIRONMENT: Brazil Slow to Protect Ozone

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 18 1996 (IPS) - Brazil is close to be labelled an environmental villain because of its slow pace in ending the use of ozone-depleting gases, according to environmentalists.

The sluggish progress in substituting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) is openly recognised by the environment ministry and it even has acknowledged an increased use of these gases in Brazil since economic recovery began in 1994.

The sale of refrigerators using CFC has risen by more than 30 percent in the last two years and sales of other domestic appliances with CFCs, such as air conditioners, has also inreased due to the more stable real.

The rich nations of the world have already stopped using CFCs, but medium and highly populated developing nations, like China, India and Brazil, are still allowing use of the gas. Brazil alone produces ten tons per year!

The CFC substitution programme must get underway in Brazil within two years to be effective, said Fernando Ribeiro, environmental coordinator of the Fund for Studies and Projects (FINEP), the country’s official technical development body.

As the deadline for outlawing CFCs approaches, pressure from the rich nations is expected to increase. Developing countries were given 10 extra years to abolish the substances most damaging to the ozone layer, while the Montreal Protocol only gave the rest of the world to the end of 1995.

Brazil is aiming to phase out CFCs from 2001, but in order to do this it must “approve more rigourous legislation and establish fiscal mechanisms, like a surcharge on CFCs and incentives for companies which substitute it,” in order to accelerate the process, said Ribeiro.

It is normal, though worrying, that the companies continue to delay the reconversion because of the cost factor and the lack of market pressure, he added.

FINEP is providing 10 million dollars obtained from the World Bank to fund industrial projects which aim to substitute CFCs and other ozone-destroying substances. The money was obtained from the Multilateral Fund, created by the 1987 Montreal Protocol in order to help out the developing nations. As well as the World Bank, three United Nations agencies working in development, industry and the environment play a part in its application.

Initial estimates from the Brazilian government show some 900 million dollars will be needed for the total reconversion of the national industry.

CFC substitution advanced somewhat in the refrigeration sector, where “there is greater business mobilisation,” said Ribeiro. The air conditioner manufacturers are alreadly using HCFCs, which cause less damage and only have to be phased out by 2015.

Some companies have been especially commended for their isolated initiatives.

This is the case with the Poly-Urethane which substituted CFCs with sunflower and groundnut oil in its plastics production – another great source of contamination.

This project won the company the Sao Paulo International Ozone Protection Day prize Monday, an initiative planned to encourage projects to defend the ozone layer.

Another prizewinning company was Coca-Cola as it demanded all its outlets be free of CFC, from January 1995 – a move which forced 230,000 distributors to use cleaner technology, said Marcio Amazonas, environmental director of the transnational.

The measure also caused 10 industrial companies to modify their products to avoid losing an important market, adopting technologies which will be used throughout the productive sector in the future.

“Initially, there was resistence because of the cost, but this was overcome,” said Amazonas, adding “the most difficult aspect was to change the refrigeration in the factories” and the 56 bottling plants, which have such large scale machinery that it cannot be substituted overnight.

In these cases, Coca-Cola encouraged recycling, reuse and the application of processes which reduce the escape of gases to a minimum, until the time comes to replace any equipment with a useful life of more than 10 years, said the company director.