Dark rivers

Opinion piece

Petrochemical industry associations and their partners?- representing the interests of plastic packaging producers?- fund non-profit organisations who work to mitigate climate change and plastic pollution. The petrochemical industry causes widespread pollution, meanwhile funding projects to clean up the mess, diverting the public’s attention away from the environmental harm done in the first place.

Rivers of Dow

As an example, let’s take Dow.

Dow is among the largest plastic and chemical producing companies globally. Wastewater from chemicals production facilities contaminates rivers, lakes, aquifers and the ocean, harming human health and impacting biodiversity.

Some documented cases related to Dow's river pollution include the Great Lakes mercury crisis, pollution of the Lower Brazos watershed and the Tittabawassee and the Saginaw rivers and contamination of drinking water sources in New Jersey. And lest we forget, Dow’s history linked to harming the environment and human health goes back many decades, still now impacting the lives of millions in Vietnam. Besides causing chemical pollution in rivers, many of Dow's chemicals are headed to plastic packaging production and those products likewise end up in our waterways and oceans.

While Dow pollutes rivers, Dow co-created ‘Rivers Are Life’,?aiming to fund and amplify the voices of selected River Heroes around the world. Founded in 2023, the stated mission of Rivers Are Life is to support 1.000 river protection projects globally. The Rivers are Life website features 12 river projects supported in the US, Canada, Chile, India and Indonesia.

Rivers Are Life appears to be a PR campaign designed for Dow’s sustainability reporting and to make Dow look like a supporter of environmentalists and protector of rivers, while diverting attention away from Dow’s true identity as a river polluter.??

One of the highlighted projects is located in Indonesia, called ‘Chasing the Bono’. The River Hero of Chasing the Bono is a man who lives on the banks of the Kampar River in the village of Teluk Meranti on Sumatra island. The focus of this hero is to protect the Kampar river and the Bono, one of the world’s longest and widest tidal bores and a dream wave for any surfer. On the Rivers Are Life webpage, the Chasing the Bono film highlights community-based ecotourism. The River Hero speaks about the importance of conducting litter clean-ups to protect the Bono and ecotourism.

On the Rivers Are Life website Dow states that by supporting local projects that focus on conserving marine resources and deploying them in a sustainable way, Dow and future members of Rivers Are Life can drive downstream progress on several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, helping to solve the climate and carbon crisis and enabling a healthier, more sustainable planet.?

Indeed, cleaning up rivers is both literally and figuratively speaking a downstream measure. A great portion of plastic packaging found in clean-ups in Indonesia and other Asian countries are small sachets and pouches, such as produced by Dow. It is actually this type of packaging, which causes major pollution in rivers, such as in the Kampar river.

False recycling promises

Dow states that many of their products are designed to be 'recycle-ready at the outset'. Are they recycled?

Mostly not.

Whether a packaging can be or actually is being recycled is related to material choice and packaging composition. Recyclability also depends on many other factors, such as geographical distances from collection points to recycling factories and cost of transport and the value of the packaging for waste pickers, in areas where collection depends on the informal waste sector. Informal waste workers are paid for materials per weight and do not focus on collecting light-weight and small size plastics such as sachets and pouches. There is no at-scale recycling technology available which can recycle sachets and pouches in any country.

Various plastic pollution datasets (Gaia, SungaiWatch, Greenpeace) have identified sachets and pouches as the most branded type of packaging found littered in the environment. Waste management reports have identified multilayer flexible packaging as the most challenging of packaging to recover and recycle. Besides such packaging ending up in rivers and on riverbanks, it is dumped directly into the sea, clogs waterways, is openly burned or is deposited in open dump sites (not sanitary landfills).

The practice of openly burning sachets and pouches at household level and in landfills is widespread all over Asia, including in regions where recyclable plastic items are collected. Open burning poses risks to the environment, public health and aggravates the climate crisis. The toxic smoke pollutes the air we breathe. Some of the most dangerous chemicals created and released during burning are dioxins, which are by-products formed when chlorine-containing products are burned. Dioxins tend to adhere to the waxy surface of leaves and enter the food chain in this way. Even if certain types of plastic such as polyethylene or polypropylene do not contain chlorine, other materials attached to or burned with the plastic may be a chlorine source.

Unburned portions of the plastic become litter on the ground and in lakes and rivers.?

Sweeping with the tap open

Thousands of volunteers and professionals alike conduct regular clean-ups across the globe. Although clean-ups are needed, studies?have shown that we will not significantly reduce plastic pollution through clean-ups alone. Clean-ups are downstream interventions while the real solution for healthy ecosystems is going upstream, reducing plastic production and plastic waste generation in the first place. Upstream interventions are designed to prevent the continuous influx of single-use packaging into rivers and other ecosystems. One solution promoted by multiple stakeholders across the globe is system change towards reusables and refilling systems to reduce waste generation (report by Global Plastics Policy Centre in collaboration with Break Free From Plastic?Making Reuse a Reality Report ; resources at Planet Reuse ;?Upstream solutions; study on Phasing Out Sachets and Introducing Refill and Bulkstore Business Models (Indonesia); report by United Nations Environment Programme Turning off The Tap which highlights upstream measures.?

Industry for change?

It’s not surprising that Dow supports downstream initiatives like River Heroes who conduct clean-ups. However, we should ask whether Dow and other industry giants would support River Heroes who call for reduction of plastic production and who promote upstream interventions and advance reuse-refill systems.

Nina van Toulon?

#EnvironmentalJustice #GreenPR #Environment #Pollution #Rivers #Chemicals #Packaging