Position Paper

The Flow of Industrial Wastewater from the Telma Factory onto Haifa Beaches - August 2010

The Telma factory, located on Haifa Bay, produces mayonnaise, soups, spreads, sauces, and jams. The factory is owned by the global corporation, Unilever, which is one of the world’s largest food production corporations with an annual in-take of about 40 billion Euros and a net profit of about 3.6 billion Euros. During the year’s business cycle, Unilever’s sales in Israel amounted to hundreds of millions of euros.

For many years, and artificial river has flown onto the Haifa Beaches via a wastewater pipe from the Telma factory; this is what Zalul has deemed as the “Telma River”. About 5 million cubic meters of waste-water is discharged from the pipe every year. Included in the discharge, among other things warranted by the discharge permit, are about 10 tons of fat, 2 tons of ammonia, 4 tons of nitrogen, and 2 tons of phosphorous, which come from the manufacturing processes, as well as the cleaning processes of industrial containers.

Despite the high profits of the Unilever Corporation as illustrated in the financial data above, the main claim made by representatives of Unilever Israel, as given before the committee for discharge permits to the sea in response to delays in the the implementation of a plan to cease the discharge, is that the corporation cannot withstand the financial burden that a solution to stop the flow of waste-water would require.

Currently, the Haifa Court is hearing criminal inditement filed by the Ministry of the Environment against the Telma factory and the Unilever Corportation, over the discharge of oil off of the coast of Haifa in 2008.

Last year (July 30, 2009), Unilever Israel undertook a project to reduce the flow of wastewater to the sea by installing a closed sewage system until 1.9.2010. However, the company probably will not meet this expectation, and will continue to pump waste-water into the sea even after 1.9.2010.

This delay will cause the continuation of the flow of waste-water into the sea, amounting to tens of tons of pollutants each year. The failure to meet the deadline to stop the flow of wastewater constitutes a violation of the discharge permit; a failure that breaks the 1988 law for the prevention of land-based pollution.

The Unilever Corporation has stated, values of environmental protection, the family, energy, vitality, health, healthy life-styles, the power to succeed, but in this act of pollution, has abandoned those values. In actuality, Unilever is hurting the society and the community. This sentiment has also been expressed by the permit committee, which attests that the discharge of this wastewater is harmful.

About three weeks ago (15.7.10) Zalul turned to the CEO of Unilever Worldwide, and to the CEO of Unilever Israel, with a request to stop the flow of the wastewater into the sea, but, this appeal was responded to in a manner that justified the pollution and took shelter under the fact that the factory succeeded, over the course of many years, under various pretexts, to gain permission from the Ministry of the Environment. It should be noted that they only gave us an answer after they were notified of Zalul’s campaign against their wastewater discharge.

Zalul calls on the management of Unilever and the Telma factory to immediately stop the flow of wastewater onto the Haifa beaches.

Zalul calls on the Ministry of the Environment to immediately stop the flow of wastewater onto the beach, even if this requires the cancelation of the factory’s discharge permit.

Our organization calls on the Municipality of Haifa to immediately cancel the business license of the Telma factory until the streaming of waste onto the city’s beaches ceases completely.