Chile's National Environmental Commission launched a website naming the country's top polluters. By publishing the carbon dioxide emission, other toxic discharges and energy efficient records of Chile's top 5,000 firms, CONAMA seeks to give transparency a boost and make Chileans more aware of environmental issues.

Titled Emission Register and Contaminants Transference, the website lists details of over 5,000 Chilean enterprises on their emission data, incidents of chemical and other hazardous leaks and energy efficient measures installed. The website will be interactive, citizens can post questions.

CONAMA will source the data from different government agencies, including the Health Ministry, National Statistics Institute, the Santiago Metropolitan Regional Authority and the Inter-ministerial Secretariat of Transportation Planning.

Foreign and local organizations donated over $1 million to CONAMA to finance the website.

Environmental non-governmental organizations welcomed the use of the World Wide Web to hasten information dissemination on environmental issues. Samuel Leiva, a representative of Greenpeace Chile, said, "This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding the country's environmental conditions. The fact that we now have access to this information allows us to become far more familiar with the country's reality."

According to the US Energy Information Agency, Chile's air and water pollution come from two main sources, vehicles and factories. Chile is the world's largest producer of copper, with hundreds of mines and smelter plants spewing sulfur dioxide, arsenic and other particulate matters. On July 2000, the state ordered 250,000 cars off the capital city and shut down temporarily 2,500 facilities when it had a smog emergency.

The new website, in Spanish language, is at the link http://www.retc.cl.