Plastic manufacturing and the real cost to communities

 

I am watching a documentary series on Netflix called Dirty Money.  The first one was about landlords, in particular Donald Trumps son in law, the second was about blood gold, how the drug cartels of south america are laundering their money by illegally mining gold in Peru, sending it to the USA and they would pay in clean money.  The one I watched today was all about a plastic manufacturing company originating in Taiwan and how they ruined and poisened a whole town.  The company is called Formosa, but they are just one of many polluting everything they touch as well as cutting corners on safety, all to make more and more money.  We have to stop buying so much plastic.

Here is more information on the succesfull lawsuit that the residents of the area of Point Comfort brought against Formosa.

On the afternoon of January 15, activist Diane Wilson kicked off a San Antonio Estuary Waterkeeper meeting on the side of the road across from a Formosa plastics manufacturing plant in Point Comfort, Texas. After Wilson and the waterkeeper successfully sued Formosa, the company agreed to no longer release even one of the tiny plastic pellets known as nurdles into the region’s waterways. The group of volunteers had assembled that day to check whether the plant was still discharging these raw materials of plastics manufacturing.   

Their suit against Formosa Plastics Corp. USA resulted in a $50-million-dollar settlement and a range of conditions in an agreement known as a consent decree. Key among the conditions was the company’s promise to halt releasing the nurdles it manufactures into local waterways leading to the Texas Gulf Coast by January 15.

Wilson described the occasion as “day one of the zero discharge settlement.” As of that date, Formosa could be fined up to $15,000 a day if it were found still discharging nurdles. That would put the multi-billion-dollar plastics maker in violation of the court settlement made after U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt determined the company had violated the Clean Water Act by discharging plastic pellets and PVC powder into Lavaca Bay and Cox Creek in a June 27 ruling last year.

The deal, signed by Judge Hoyt in December, represents the U.S.’s largest settlement in a Clean Water Act lawsuit brought by private individuals against an industrial polluter. The settlement mandates that both Formosa and the plaintiffs agree to a monitor, remediation consultant, engineer, and trustee for ongoing monitoring of the plant.

After calling the group’s meeting to order, Wilson gave an update on how requirements of the consent decree were progressing. The volunteer team of nurdle monitors, who have been collecting nurdles discharged by the plant for the last four years, listened eagerly. Wilson said that Formosa had missed the January 15 deadline to deliver the waivers they needed to sign, which would grant them permission to monitor on the company’s property along the fence line. Without the signed forms, the group put off their on-the-ground monitoring trip. Instead, they headed for the banks of Cox Creek, where Wilson set off in a kayak to check on one of the plant’s outfalls.

Within 10 minutes she collected an estimated 300 of the little plastic pellets. Wilson says she will save them as evidence, along with any additional material the group collects, to present to the official — and yet-to-be-selected — monitor.

Wilson received the waiver forms from Formosa a day after the deadline. The group plans to set out by foot on January 18, which will allow them to cover more ground on their next monitoring trip. They hope to check all of the facility’s 14 outtakes where nurdles could be still be escaping. Any nurdles discharged on or after January 15 in the area immediately surrounding the plant would be in violation of the court settlement.

Pointing along the creek’s edge, Ronnie Hamrick, a member of the San Antonio Estuary Waterkeeper and former Formosa employee, showed me how to distinguish new plastic pellets from the legacy nurdles from past discharges. The new ones are brighter and white compared to the older ones, which take on a dull gray color. Old nurdles were plentiful along the creek’s banks despite cleanup crews deployed by Formosa in that area. Newer ones were easy to find in the water after Hamrick pushed a rake into the marsh, stirring them up from below the water’s surface in Cox Creek.

When Wilson returned from her kayak, she showcased her find: The nurdles she had just collected from the Formosa outfall were bright white, making them easy to distinguish from the older ones littering the bank where she had launched her kayak. She plans to turn them over as evidence of newly discharged nurdles to the official monitor once one is selected in accordance to the consent decree.

Lawsuit Against Formosa’s Planned Louisiana Plant

On that same afternoon, Wilson learned that conservation and community groups in Louisiana had sued the Trump administration, challenging federal environmental permits for Formosa’s planned $9.4 billion plastics complex in St. James Parish.  

The news made Wilson smile. “I hope they win. The best way to stop the company from polluting is not to let them build another plant,” she told me. 

The lawsuit was filed in federal court against the Army Corps of Engineers, accusing the Corps of failing to disclose environmental damage and public health risks and failing to adequately consider environmental damage from the proposed plastics plant. Wilson had met some of the Louisiana-based activists last year when a group of them had traveled to Point Comfort and protested with her outside Formosa’s plastics plant that had begun operations in 1983. Among them was Sharon Lavigne, founder of the community group Rise St. James, who lives just over a mile and a half from the proposed plastics complex in Louisiana.

Back then, Wilson offered them encouragement in their fight. A few months after winning her own case last June, she gave them boxes of nurdles she had used in her case against Formosa. The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups in the Louisiana lawsuit, transported the nurdles to St. James. The hope was that these plastic pellets would help environmental advocates there convince Louisiana regulators to deny Formosa’s request for air permits required for building its proposed St. James plastics complex that would also produce nurdles. On January 6, Formosa received those permits, but it still has a few more steps before receiving full approval for the plant.

 In their January 15 lawsuit, the groups, which also include Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and Healthy Gulf, point out that a Texas judge called Formosa’s Point Comfort plant a “serial offender” of the Clean Water Act. They also cite another Formosa facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which has been in violation of the Clean Air Act every quarter since 2009. 

The new plant slated for St. James Parish “is expected to emit and discharge a variety of pollutants, including carcinogens and endocrine disrupters, into the air and water; [and] discharge plastic into the Mississippi River and other waterbodies,” the lawsuit alleges.

DeSmog’s Sharon Kelly reported that out of all the new or expanding U.S. refineries, liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, and petrochemical plants seeking air permits, Formosa’s St. James plant would top the list of air polluters.

“Wilson’s victory against Formosa was very encouraging,” Sharon Lavigne told me over the phone. She plans to cite it as one of the many reasons why the St. James Parish Council should reverse its 2018 decision to grant Formosa a land use permit for the sprawling plastics facility. She and others will address the council over a multitude of issues at its upcoming January 21 meeting.

From the Gulf Coast to Europe

Just a day after Wilson found apparently new nurdles in Point Comfort, the Plastic Soup Foundation, an advocacy group based in Amsterdam, took legal steps to stop plastic pellet pollution in Europe. On behalf of the group, environmental lawyers submitted an enforcement request to a Dutch environmental protection agency, which is responsible for regulating the cleanup of nurdles polluting waterways in the Netherlands.

The foundation is the first organization in Europe to take legal steps to stop plastic pellet pollution. It cites in its enforcement request to regulators Wilson’s victory in obtaining a “zero discharge” promise from Formosa and is seeking a similar result against Ducor Petrochemicals, the Rotterdam plastic producer. Its goal is to prod regulators into forcing Ducor to remove tens of millions of plastic pellets from the banks immediately surrounding its petrochemical plant.

Besides polluting waterways, the ongoing build-out of the petrochemical and plastics industry doesn’t align with efforts to keep global warming in check.

Wilson and her fellow volunteers plan to keep monitoring the Point Comfort plant until it stops discharging the tiny plastic pellets into Texas waters entirely. 

I reached out to Formosa about whether it was aware its Point Comfort plant was apparently still discharging nurdles but didn’t receive a reply before publication.

 So as long as we keep buying plastic companies like these will get bigger and bigger, we are in fact causing our own downfall.

Its all about supply and demand.

The blog song for today is: "Are you going to be my girl"by  Jet

TTFN

 

 

 

Seaspiracy the movie was chilling – but what can I do now? Greenpeace has this to say!

 

I’ve seen Seaspiracy, now do I need to go fish-free to save the ocean?

 A report by:

Ellie Hooper

1 April 2021

 

The film has already caused some controversy (not a bad thing), but like its Cowspiracy counterpart, unfortunately some of the information it contains has also been questioned. 

It has also been criticised for ignoring indigenous knowledge of the ocean and how to take care of it. Read more on that here.

Seaspiracy does however make some important points and there is no doubt that the oceans are in big trouble. I’m not going to do a full fact-check of Seaspiracy, but I do want to challenge the idea that the only thing you can do is stop eating fish. 

In the Global North where our access to a variety of different food types is greater, we should all be eating less animal products. It’s better for the planet and it’s better for us, too. 

But the problem with claiming this is the best thing you can do, or the only route to saving the ocean, is that it’s just not enough for some of us to change our diets. We need big systemic change, and we need it quickly.

Also, many communities around the globe, and indeed here in Aoteaora, depend upon fishing to survive. Not everyone can afford to avoid seafood, and many of these communities don’t take more from the sea than they need. A blanket ban on eating fish would unfairly disadvantage these communities. It is industrialised fishing that’s the true evil here, not traditional harvesters taking what they need to feed their family.

Many people in the Global South are amongst the most vulnerable in the world, fighting multiple threats including climate change and overfishing – both catastrophes that have been largely caused by the privileged Global North.   

Going fish-free is great if you can, but our true power lies in when we work together. If we want to change things at the speed we need to, we must put pressure on global governments to change the way we treat the ocean. The ocean doesn’t have time to wait for every individual to go vegan. Read more about why going vegan can’t be the only answer.

Global solutions to problems raised by Seaspiracy

Solving a problem as large as this is not simple. But there are solutions, backed up by scientists who have been waving red flags for years.

What we need to get these solutions implemented is people power. Everyday people, getting together and creating pressure on their government to protect the ocean for us all. 

This is how we’ve made change happen many times before – including kicking oil and gas giants out of New Zealand, stopping shark finning, and getting more protections for Māui dolphins.

Protecting key areas of the sea from commercial fishing – areas that are known migratory pathways, biodiversity hotspots and spawning grounds – is one of the major solutions scientists have put forward to save the ocean from collapse. 

A Global Ocean Treaty at the UN would give us the ability to protect 30% of the world’s ocean from fishing and other threats, and allow it to start recovering. The good news is that we know recovery is possible, and that it could happen within a few decades, if we take action now.

Greenpeace has been campaigning for a Global Ocean Treaty for years, and it is vital that we get the strongest version of it across the line.

If you do one thing for the ocean today – make it joining this campaign for international ocean sanctuaries

It starts local

In Aotearoa and around the world, the commercial fishing industry is doing widespread damage to the ocean through techniques like bottom trawling that destroy habitats, kill non-target species, and take too many fish for populations to rebuild. 

 

 

 

Greenpeace NZ activists deliver a Christmas tree to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, calling for cameras on boats in order to curb destructive fishing practices.  

As Seaspiracy noted, this is having a devastating effect on the functioning of the ocean – our biggest carbon sink, and home to an estimated 80% of life on this planet. 

We cannot fight the twin crises in biodiversity and climate if we don’t protect the ocean, take less from it, and stop damaging its ability to sequester carbon. 

So we must take the commercial fishing industry to task, and force governments to stop letting them off the hook for the damage they do. Our survival, and the survival of everything else on this planet, depends on a healthy ocean. If the ocean dies, we die too.

In Aotearoa we’ve known for years that Big Fishing companies have too much influence over our Government and ocean management decisions, and we know the way we fish needs to change. 

We know that the commercial fishing industry lobbies the Government relentlessly and has successfully watered-down ocean protection measures for decades – from those that protect seabirds to those designed to protect coral. We suspect that it’s their influence preventing New Zealand from committing to a strong Global Ocean Treaty at the UN.

Take on the most destructive forms of fishing

 Bottom trawling – the most devastating form of fishing there is – needs to be banned where corals grow and provide vital habitats for fish and the very basis of the oceanic food chain. 

When bottom trawlers target seamounts where these corals are found, they bulldoze everything. Their giant nets capture everything in the area, from target to non target species, ancient corals to sharks. Worse still is that the nature of the trawling destroys the habitat, flattening it, meaning it can no longer support life, and won’t for decades to come.

In Seaspiracy they quote the stat that 3.9 billion acres of seafloor is destroyed by bottom trawling every year, compared to 25 million on land. 

The impacts of this on biodiversity are obvious, but just last month it was revealed that bottom trawling also releases more carbon emissions than global aviation.

This form of fishing is a double whammy for the environment – wiping out species and habitats, and disturbing the world’s largest carbon sink on which life on Earth depends.

Over 50,000 New Zealanders have already joined the campaign to ban bottom trawling on seamounts, will you join them today?

ADD MY NAME TO STOP BOTTOM TRAWLING

Hold the fishing industry to account 

The commercial fishing industry needs to be held to account for what they do out at sea. A key component to that is getting more transparency around it. 

There are already rules for fishers about how to protect the ocean, but without independent checks there is no way to ensure they are being followed. Again and again we are shown that when we rely on commercial fishing to self-report the impacts of their fishing, they don’t tell the whole truth. 

To ensure they do, and to make sure commercial fishing can’t stay out of sight and out of mind, we need cameras on all commercial fishing vessels, and the footage accessible to more than just the industry.

Join the campaign to get cameras on 100% of the commercial fishing fleet:

ADD MY NAME

  

Tackle plastic fishing waste

The plastic-free movement has exploded in the past five years, bringing with it millions of individuals who vowed to avoid plastic bottles, ban the bag, and ditch the plastic packaging. Eliminating single-use plastic is important if we want to stem the tide entering the ocean, but there’s one industry that’s still getting off the hook and they’re a major contributor.

Ghost fishing gear – lines and the like that are lost or discarded at sea by commercial fishing – is everywhere. It’s estimated fishing waste makes up a whopping 46 per cent of what’s in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

This stuff is all the more deadly to ocean life because it was always designed to kill, and when it’s lost at sea it goes on killing for years after becoming separated from its original owner. Many whales, dolphins, turtles and fish get caught up in these nets and perish, or ingest them and die.

It’s high time commercial fishing was held to account for their role in the plastics crisis, and we’ve got a campaign for that too. 

ADD MY NAME

Don’t just sign petitions

Taking action is what Greenpeace is all about. For fifty years, we’ve been standing up for the ocean, and all life on this Earth. 

Greenpeace campaigned to get Thai Union to implement sustainable fishing practices and worker-protection, following revelations that Thai Union has been linked to human rights abuses in its supply chain. © Will Rose / Greenpeace

Our independence matters. We don’t take money from governments or corporations, so we’re free to campaign against whatever and whoever we need to. 

If you want to get involved further in protecting our blue planet, send us a message at genz@greenpeace.org and someone will be in touch with you.

And sign up now to donate monthly, it’s regular contributions from people like you that keeps us in action.

DONATE NOW

 

I donate 6 euros a month because I think these people are doing an absolutely wonderful job, I have supported them for over 30 years.