11/2/2008
Fréttatilkynningin á Íslensku

Monday morning at 8:30 Saving Iceland disturbed the opening of the two-day conference Metals: Energy, Emissions and the Environment in Brussels. About twenty activists blocked the conference entrance of the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel with chain locks and aluminium garbage. With this action they protested against Alcoa, Rio Tinto-Alcan and Hydro, who are using this conference to promote aluminium as a ‘sustainable’ metal.

Watch the video on Youtube

See also: IRN Aluminium toolkit - Foiling the Aluminum Industry: A Toolkit for Communities, Activists, Consumers, and Workers

Frumvinnsla áls - Lýsing á hinni mengandi og orkufreku framleiðslu álbarra. Þýtt úr “Foiling the Aluminum Industry”

This important and lengthy report from the Washington based Sustainable Energy and Economy Network is highly informative about the operational structure of the aluminum industry and the resulting impacts on human rights and the environment. Because it has been unavailable on the Net for a while we publish it here in its entirety.

An IPS/SEEN/TNI report, 2001

31 July 2007

Twenty three year old British Saving Iceland activist Miriam R. has been arrested by the Icelandic police. She was protesting against the Icelandic government's support for heavy industry, in particular Rio Tinto Alcan's Straumsvik smelter in South-West Iceland. Reports suggest she is still being held by the police. (1)

Dr. Derek Wall, Green Party Principal Speaker, said: "Although Rio Tinto have been making the headlines for their recent purchase of the Canadian aluminium group Alcan for 38.1bn dollars (18.7bn pounds), it is the environmental degradation and damage that goes hand in hand with most of their projects that should be drawing the spotlight.

Saving Iceland held a public meeting with inhabitants of Thorlakshöfn, accompanied by Lerato Maregele from EarthLife South Africa, struggling against ALCAN, and Attilah Springer from Rights Action, Trinidad, struggling against ALCOA. They talked about similarities in the way these companies operate in their respective countries and Iceland. Concern was expressed about pollution, climate, and the way the aluminium industry abandons towns to waste when they will close smelters in a few decades. Thorlakshöfn is named as a new smelter location by Rio Tinto ALCAN, Norsk Hydro, Arctus/Altech and Down Corning. The mayor of Thorlakshöfn has suggested his town as a location for two new smelters.

2/1/2007

Greenland rashly joins Iceland as the Final European Frontier for the aluminium industry.

Whilst we reported previously that Norsk Hydro were in talks to build a 300,000 MTPY hydroelectric powered aluminium smelter in Greenland, it actually seems that there is a highly nauseating competition taking place between Hydro and Alcoa to win this smelter contract. Or is Greenland Home Rule reckless enough to build two smelters in one of the planets most fragile ecosystems?

One is led to wonder if it is not the neo-colonial situation shared by the two small and easily manipulated nations that appeals to the powerful aluminium barons, just as in Trinidad and Tobago...

We urgently invite any individuals or groups enraged by this project to contact us, savingiceland@riseup.net

1/1/2007

Already beset by the devastating effects of a global warming caused by the heavy industrialisation of the planet, the glacial island of Greenland is now under an even more immediate industrial threat: this time by the aluminium industry. Norsk Hydro recently announced that it is considering plans to build a 300,000 tonne and 500 Megawatt primary aluminium smelter in Greenland, powered by the damming of a yet undisclosed part of the island.

11/17/2006 - Reykjavik newspaper 'Bladid' reports that Norwegian oil and aluminium company Hydro (or Norsk Hydro as they are known in Iceland) and the Icelandic government met yesterday to discuss the possibility of building a 600,000 ton smelter in Iceland within the next eight years. The company’s representatives met with Iceland’s Minister of Industries Jón Sigurdsson yesterday to present their ideas, as Bladid reports.

However, Sigurdsson denied on Icelandic State Radio that the smelter plan was ever mentioned in the talks... How shady everything has become in the little aluminium republic.

Montreal Mirror
Nov 20-26.2003
Vol. 19 No. 23

Impoverished Indians fight ALCAN's bid to open a mine in their backyard. Since this article was written the repression has been stepped up.

The first thing that greeted Angad Bhalla on entering Maikanch, a town in the east coast mineral-rich state Orissa, India, was the painting of an Adivasi tribal man in traditional clothes and the admonition: POLICE NO ENTER.