China’s largest aluminum producer…Aluminum Corporation of China, also known as Chalco, has been fined 100,000 yuan ($15,000), and five of its employees have been reprimanded or dismissed.

...[T]he president of Chalco’s Lanzhou office, admitted the company had not managed its hazardous waste well prior to August 2016 but said that it had been taking measures to comply since then…Sixth Tone’s repeated calls to Chalco’s Lanzhou office and the media department of Chalco’s national headquarters in Beijing went unanswered…Chalco’s investor relations department told Sixth Tone it was not responsible for commenting on the matter.

...In September, Airman [Beijing-based environmental] said…while conducting field research in Gansu, it had discovered that the Chalco factory in Lanzhou was not properly disposing of its hazardous industrial waste, which included thousands of cathode carbon blocks. Soon after, the city’s environmental watchdog ordered the Chalco factory to safely dispose of its 1,700 tons of carbon blocks. However, when Airman returned to the site in early December, they found that the massive quantity of carbon blocks had been buried underground. Gansu Xinxin Furnace Company, the contractor hired by Chalco’s Lanzhou operations to dispose of the waste, was fined the same amount as its employer for failing to “take relevant safety measures,” according to Lanzhou’s environmental protection bureau.

Li Enze, executive director of the environmental law center at Beijing Impact Law Firm, told Sixth Tone that a big company such as Chalco should be much more aware of environmental regulations…