The message is loud and clear-clean the mess.
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Jhatkaa is calling on Unilever’s CEO, Paul Polman, to take responsibility for the company’s supposed failure to clean up the mercury poisoning from its Kodaikanal thermometer assembly plant. “The idea behind the video and taking it to the social media platform is because for the last 14 years we haven’t got much attraction from the mainstream media primarily because of the amount of money that Unilever invests in advertising”, Nityanand says.
After Greenpeace UK exposed Unilever for dumping 5.3 tons of waste in the Indian city in 2001, the company shuttered its factory, claiming it would look into the effect its actions had on the environment. This was an attempt to convince the shareholders to make the company address its liabilities (the death toll stands at 45 workers of the Unilever factory besides 12 of their children). “The company used to first remove red labels that showed a skull and crossbones and some text about mercury in English from the glass mercury bottles that came from America”.
A new study, released in June by a group called Community Environmental Monitoring, found high levels of toxic mercury in vegetation, river and sediment collected from the vicinity of the thermometer factory in Kodaikanal.
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The battle of Kodaikanal against the reckless dumping of mercury by the Hindustan Unilever has reached crescendo with the popular rap, “Kodaikanal Won’t” going viral that was made by a Chennai based artist Sofia Ashraf.
