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Problem statement: One major source of toxic contamination in the Great Lakes Basin has been the auto manufacturing industry. Many substances of concern are use in the manufacturing stage of the car as well as in the product itself. Mercury switches, lead alloy and PVC plastics are compounds use in today's car manufacturing. All of these compound eventually end up in the environment polluting the soil, the water and air. For example, basic data provided by USEPA are telling us the 10,000 kg of mercury are used each year by the auto industry in making switches. These mercury switches (1gr per switch) when crushed in a car shredder facility are releasing between 7 to 16 tons of mercury to the environment (American Metal Market. June 1999).
Project description
This project is focussing on promoting a cleaner car in the Great Lakes basin. A clean car that would meet a 3 component standard (see the clean car campaign web site). The standard is based on energy efficiency, less atmospheric emissions and clean manufacturing and recycling of automobiles. We were proposing to reach that goal by doing a series of activities. First we were going to produce a report on the environmental impact of the car recycling industry in North America. We were also producing education material as well as encouraging the public to send pledges to the car industry to challenge them to produce a clean car. Finally we were organizing a workshop on Extended Producers Responsibility as a policy tool for decision makers to promote a clean car and better recycling of end of life vehicles.
Outcome and success
The project and the related activities were very successful. We released the mercury in vehicle report in January and got extensive media coverage both in the US and in Canada (coverage is available upon request) The report was then post on the Great Lakes United web site and the clean car campaign web site and since then many people called and asked for a copy of the report. This report constitute one of the only reliable source of information about the contribution of the car industry to the mercury contamination problem in North America. The workshop last February was attended by more then 100 participants from the car industry, the car industry workers, ENGO and government. It was considerable success and the proceedings are requested by many people. The most interesting and concrete outcome of this project is potential State and provincial bill and programs to implement take back system for mercury switches contained in vehicles. But other outcome such as mercury switches action in different parts of the Basin are or will happen soon.
Challenges
We are now face with the outcome of this successful project because we need to fulfill the expectation created by the release of the report and the workshop. Different organisations and individual are calling us to create partnership and alliance on some specific issues like the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries www.isri.org who are very interested in removing mercury and other toxic substances for the metal scrap feedstock.
Lessons learned
We are glad to say that working all together in a coalition such as the Clean Car campaign Coalition is very successful like. Therefore we are approaching other project as a team of organisations working all together with the same goal. The other lesson is to make sure that in the future we have efficient, fruitful and focussed strategies like we used in this particular project.
What is next ?
We will work on pushing the States and Provinces around the Great Lakes to adopt Extended Producer legislations to remove and ban persistent toxic substances like mercury in products and processes. The Clean car campaign is now on going and we will continue to participate and other targeted effort to obtain a cleaner vehicles for consumers that would not contain toxic substances.
Union Saint-Laurent, Grands Lacs (Great Lakes United)
Montréal, Québec, Canada
http://www.glu.org
For more information about this grant, please contact the CEC Secretariat.
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Canada 
