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COMMODITY BOOM
The deadly side effects of a German car
Cars are made of steel, copper and aluminum. Their degradation aimed at the countries of origin of major damage. Organizations require: Automakers must prevent that.

VW plant in Zwickau, a Golf VI mounted
Who knows where it comes from his car? Caution: What is meant here is not the place of assembly. Where do the parts and raw materials, which are in the car? Hardly a motorist is able to answer the - often not even the car companies themselves know where their vehicles are the components in detail. It was clear by the earthquake in Fukushima. At that time many companies were missing parts, without they could tell who was exactly the manufacturer. Apparently, it is possible the car manufacturers do not always, in their global industry in which they themselves contribute only a quarter of the value added to the product, to keep track of their complex supply relationships.

Million tons of metals are processed each year in the automotive industry. Especially iron and steel, copper and aluminum stuck in the vehicles. Taken together, they make for example in a VW Golf - specifically the Volkswagen Golf 2.0 TDI - from 70 to 75 percent of the weight. But the mining of raw materials that are needed for a car, lead in the countries of origin often to serious human rights violations, say charities.

DISPLAY

"Blood diamonds", steel and copper

So far, the public rather other, rarer materials have been associated with human rights violations in the context. As gold, its degradation is often caused major environmental damage or coltan and diamonds, which can be sold on the world market as expensive fuel that the proceeds of the trade conflict as a civil war in the Congo. But the production of steel, copper and aluminum may also timely dire consequences. The study from ore to the car, the Misereor, Bread for the World and Global Policy Europe shows at a hearing on Thursday presented in Berlin.

For example, iron and steel: The VW Golf is chosen as an example to 65 percent of these two metals, as measured by weight. Steel is made from iron ore, and its promotion consumes vast areas and large amounts of water - about the Indian Jharkhand, where the iron ore mining displaced thousands of people from their land and poverty rates, because of the evictions are much higher than the average for India . At the same time, the smelting of the ore into pig iron requires huge amounts of energy, and the exhaust gases and wastewater industry pollute the air. In Brazil, for example, the authorities raised because of the environmental effects of a steel mill ThyssenKrupp indictment.

"Green Desert" is what the Brazilians those plantations of eucalyptus trees in the mining region in the north of the country from which the charcoal is produced for the Eisenerzverhüttung. The growing need huge areas of land that would removed the residents reported the lawyer and activist Danilo Chammas in Berlin. After a maximum of three planting cycles remain the soil contaminated by pesticides back. "The food security of the people is in danger." On photos showed Chammas, brown dust clouds cover the sky. The ironworks blew the dust into the air, he propitiation the land in a dense layer, Chammas said. "People can not help but breathe it constantly."

Similarly detrimental is the copper mining. In Zambia, a land rich in natural resources and possibly that's why very poor country that pollutes the largest copper mine in the country, the air of dust and sulfur dioxide. Four years ago, sulfuric acid came from the mine into the drinking water. Eight hundred people were hospitalized with poisoning, according to the study. They were not compensated.

The copper-mining landscapes transformed into deep, desert-like holes. Gigantic excavators and trucks to transport the ore from them promote and from it. They move massive amounts of earth. In Indonesia, for example promotes the Grasberg mine the metal even at 4,000 meters, the necessary tools were flown in by helicopter. Every day there are about 230,000 tons of ore mined and moved more than 600,000 tons of earth. The huge amount of overburden tip the mining operators simply in the local waters. Local fishermen went by the existence lost.

Toxic aluminum waste

Another example: aluminum. For the promotion of bauxite, from which aluminum is produced, huge areas of tropical forest are being cut down, people are displaced, drinking water is contaminated. The aluminum production consumes large amounts of energy; moreover it causes toxic waste. For every ton of aluminum produce two tons of red mud - that mud poisoned in western Hungary two years ago, 40 square kilometers of land, burst as a memory dump of the Ajka Alumina Company. Give it time and again those cases where red mud withdrawing from the landfills and the natural verseuche, write the authors of the study.

No wonder people are protesting in the mineral producing regions against the mining company. But often their protests are crushed by force, mining opponents are criminalized. Some are no longer sure of their lives: In the Philippines came Misereor According Just last week, the eleven-year old son of an activist killed by an assassination. The father survived.