Interview with Dr. Peter Donath, former Head of Environmental Affairs of Ciba (by Dr. Martin Forter)
Martin Forter*: Since “Schweizerhalle”, Basel-based companies have relocated many production facilities from the Basel region (Switzerland, Germany, France) to Asia and other areas. What role did the tightening of laws play in this relocation process, which took place in the 1980s and 1990s as consequence to “Schweizerhalle”? Did companies also make environmental cost-savings by relocating their production facilities?
Peter Donath: To put this in perspective: when I was responsible for Environmental Affairs at Ciba-Geigy from 1983 to 1990 in Switzerland and at it’s European locations, we had end-of-pipe infrastructure including wastewater treatment, exhaust air treatment and incineration plants with a value of CHF 800 million at Ciba-Geigy alone. With globalisation, the Basel companies’ buyers looked only at the price and quality of products and took no account of the occupational hygiene and environment-related conditions the chemicals they were buying were produced under in Asia. Furthermore after production was shifted to Asia – the intact European environmental protection infrastructure was less and less used due to reduced capacity - or it was shut down.
Q: When production was relocated to Asia, savings were made mainly in two areas: labour and environmental protection costs. In the Basel region, how did the environmental protection infrastructure add to production costs?
The energy and water costs, costs for auxiliary treatment materials, waste costs and, for instance, costs for wastewater treatment plants were precisely accounted for in the standard calculations for a product at Ciba-Geigy, and also at the later company Ciba Spezialitätenchemie AG. In other words, the environmental costs were broken down into the price of a product per kilo. At the time I was responsible, it was not uncommon for 15 to 20 per cent of the production costs to be environmentally-related – that really is significant if they’re taken out. In China, these environmental costs account for perhaps just five per cent.
Q: “Schweizerhalle” together with the chemical landfill sites and the pollution of the Rhine river in the Basel region today impose significant costs due to the remediation that is now required. In practice these costs are coming back to haunt Novartis, Roche, Syngenta and the other companies who cut corners by using cheap landfills instead of appropriate destruction technologies. Do you think a similar fate awaits China and India in 40 years’ time in relation to chemical wastes and chemical landfill sites?
They will hit India and China like a tidal wave – and it’s already started rolling in. They are already noticing that water is increasingly unusable. And It won’t take 40 years – it’ll hit them much sooner.
China and India are now producing traditional intermediate products and dye chemicals like the ones produced in the 1990s in the Basel region. Yet chemical waste is dumped and solvents are released into the atmosphere today. Even if solvents are regenerated, the distillation residues are just dumped somewhere behind the production plants. What happened here in Switzerland in the 1950s, 60s and 70s in terms of landfilling chemical waste and the pollution of the river Rhine was really awful - but the pollution I witnessed in China between 1993 and 2004 at chemical plants is unimaginable - especially at the Chinese owned production sites.
Q: But these Chinese producers are often associated with companies from industrialised countries through joint ventures. They produce chemicals for companies in Europe and the USA.
Yes, unfortunately that’s not uncommon, and the environmental protection infrastructure that was established here in Switzerland in the 1980s is falling into ruin owing to a lack of production. End-of-pipe environmental technology is not the perfect solution. However it is better to have waste incineration and waste water treatment plants than nothing.
Q: Has the chemical industries as a whole learned from “Schweizerhalle”?
Considering the way the industry produces chemicals in Asia today, one unfortunately has to conclude that “Schweizerhalle” had no lasting effect1.
Peter Donath started his career in 1971 as a chemist with Ciba-Geigy at its production plant in Grenzach, Germany. Five years later he took over the management of one of the most environmentally sensitive production operations. In 1978 he developed and established the environmental department at the plant and in 1983, he took over as head of Environmental Technology at the company’s Schweizerhalle facility in Switzerland where he had responsibility for environmental technology globally until 1990. Between 1991 and 1996, as a member of the Divisional Management Team for Pigments, he was responsible for technology, investment, environment, health and product safety. After the 1996 merger of Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy to form Novartis and the separation of “Ciba Spezialitätenchemie” he became responsible for establishing and developing the environmental, health and safety department at the new company Ciba until 2004. (MFo)
* Martin Forter interviewed Peter Donath as part of the study "Hidden Consequences, The costs of industrial water pollution on people, planet and profit", Published by Greenpeace International 2011
Translation: Roland Weber and Alan Watson