Rio Tinto Zinc & the Eden project Greenwash

kernow/cornwall | miscellaneous | news report Saturday August 31, 2002 13:02 by repost from Big Issue

EDEN PROJECT IN ETHICS ROW Exclusive BY Rich Cookson The UK's biggest environmental tourist attraction has teamed up with a global mining firm that has a history of allegations of environmental destruction and serious human rights abuses.

The Eden Project in Cornwall has signed a deal with global mining firm Rio Tinto to run a series of education projects about sustainable development and the role metals play in society.
Rio Tinto, which made $1.66 billion profit last year and will be in Johannesburg this later month to lobby governments at the earth summit, has been criticised over its operations in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
"Rio Tinto is a mining company that talks smooth but plays tough – from promoting mining in National Parks to stalling the Kyoto greenhouse protocol," said Bob Burton, editor of Mining Monitor magazine. "When it comes to human rights abuses – such as at the Kelian mine in Indonesia – Rio prefers secrecy."
A spokesman for Friends Of The Earth said: "Rio Tinto has a lot of extremely controversial operations around the world. They have been trying extremely hard over last few years to demonstrate that they can be a responsible mining company, but it will be a long time before we can see that that is the case.
"This partnership is not necessarily wrong, but the Eden Project and other organisations that take money from companies like Rio Tinto have to ask themselves whether they are being used to green their image."Rio Tinto spokesman Hugh
Leggatt claimed the criticisms were unfair: "The allegations made by Bob Burton are unfounded and only this week we wrote to Friends Of The Earth to say that we haven't been at the project in Indonesia since 1999. In Kelian the environmental work is of a very high standard and we have good relationship with the communities.
"The Eden Project is about regenerating the plant world and we want to learn about regenerating our mining sites. We can learn a lot from them."
Eden's spokesman Peter Whitbread-Abrutat also defended the partnership. "The Eden Project was set up to tell stories associated with sustainable development. One of the stories we want to tell is about big companies making the transition to more responsible positions. We will look at all sides of that story.
"Rio Tinto is widely regarded as one of main players in bringing the industry round to sustainability.
We are quite happy being associated with them."