Vote Rio Tinto for Greenwash Gold: http://www.greenwashgold.org/index.php/rio-tinto
The metal for the 2012 Olympics medals is being provided by Rio Tinto, a massive British mining company.
Metal for the medals will come from the company’s Kennecott Bingham Canyon mine in Utah, USA, and its Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia.
Groups in Utah are protesting about air pollution from Rio Tinto’s Bingham Canyon operations, which contributes to hundreds of premature deaths each year in the Salt Lake City area. Planned expansion would make the situation worse.
The Oyu Tolgoi mine will use enormous quantities of water in a desert region, and campaigners there accuse the company of poor planning and failure to share information with the public.
But these are not the only concerns about Rio Tinto.
The company’s Ranger Uranium Mine in Australia is routinely spilling radioactive water into the surrounding area and is opposed by Aboriginal communities.
Rio Tinto has been accused of association with human rights abuses around its now-closed Kelian Gold Mine in Indonesia and the Grasberg copper and gold mine in West Papua.
In Bougainville, in the Pacific, the company hopes to reopen a copper mine which caused such catastrophic pollution that local people closed it down. Vicious repression of anti-mine protesters by the Government of Papua New Guinea sparked a war.
In the USA, Rio Tinto is accused of violation of Indigenous treaty rights in Michigan, a legacy of pollution in Wisconsin, and planning destructive projects in Alaska and Arizona.
And it has a history of appalling labour relations.
Rio Tinto is bad news for many communities around the world. Its operations have failed to provide adequate protection of public health, the environment, workers and human rights. It is a scandal that it should be providing the metal for the London Olympic medals.
Vote Rio Tinto for Greenwash Gold 2012!
Directed and animated by Irene Fuga – www.irenefuga.com
Sound and Music by Nathaniel Robin
Special effects and additional animation by David Lopez Retamero
