In mid-November, days before this week’s final United Nations meeting to discuss plastic pollution, the Biden Administration declared that it no longer supported a cap on new plastic production, as part of a global treaty to protect environmental and human health.
The administration’s complete reversal of its position was noted by a delegation of Louisiana environmental advocates, including twin sisters Joy and Jo Banner, attending the final treaty negotiations in Busan, South Korea from Nov. 25 through Dec. 1.
Coming from Wallace, La., which successfully fought off a proposed Formosa Plastics plant decades ago, only to see the company make another try next door, in St. James Parish, the Banner sisters say that this country – and the world – cannot soften its position on plastics. “Plastic pollution is toxic and extremely harmful, and historically Black communities like ours that bear the brunt of these impacts can’t afford to wait any longer for relief,” said the Banners, founders of nonprofit The Descendants Project, which advocates for the Black community within Louisiana’s river parishes.
Only a few months ago, in August, the Biden administration had decided that U.S. negotiators would support limits on plastic production. The announcement was then seen as a major policy shift, attracting the ire of the plastic industry while gaining plaudits from environmental advocates. In some ways, it was a return to politics as usual on Nov. 18, when the Biden administration backtracked on its months-old commitment to limit plastic production.
The United States is a major manufacturer of plastics in the global market. In 2022, the nation produced 125.5 billion pounds of plastic, according to Statista.
That comes with a downside: the U.S. also generates more plastic waste than any other country, according to a study conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
Plastic production is hazardous to human health at every stage. That’s because plastic is made from crude oil, natural gas or coal, which is refined into lighter components and treated with gasoline to create chains of molecules called polymers. The polymers are blended with different materials to create small plastic pellets, or nurdles, which have become a constant presence along Texas Gulf Coast beaches. The extraction of fossil fuels and their transformation into plastics create hazardous air pollutants that can cause reproductive complications such as premature birth and low birthweights, as well as illnesses such as cancer and asthma.
Despite the dangers, plants that produce plastics line the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River, exposing both people and the environment to toxic chemicals and plastic waste.
Because plastics are made from fossil fuels, the oil and gas industry is heavily invested in continuing to produce more plastic. And in Louisiana and elsewhere, plastic manufacturing facilities follow the same discriminatory land-use patterns that left majority-Black communities surrounded by clusters of oil and gas facilities.
Wastewater from plastics plants harms fishing communities
Earlier this month, the Environmental Integrity Project released a report analyzing data on the pollutants that U.S. plastics plants release into rivers, lakes and other water bodies through wastewater.
Of the 70 included petrochemical plants, 22 are within Louisiana, according to the study by the Environmental Integrity Project, a government accountability group.
The study found that the plastics industry releases about a half billion gallons of wastewater per day.
Yet federal regulations on the wastewater from plastics manufacturing plants are more than 30 years old and do not limit certain pollutants including nitrogen, phosphorus, dioxins and mercury. But in 2023 alone, the study found, the 70 plastics plants dumped almost 12 million pounds of nitrogen and phosphorus into waterways.
Many of those plants dump their wastewater into the Mississippi River, which already contains high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from Midwest farms. The excess nutrients, whether from fertilizer runoff or plastic production, flow into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a ‘dead zone’ each summer without enough oxygen to support marine life. In August, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that this year’s ‘dead zone’ was the 12th-largest area of low to no oxygen in 38 years of record-keeping.
Other dangerous chemicals released into water through the production of plastic but unaddressed by federal regulations include dioxins and mercury. Dioxins are potent carcinogens and mercury is known to cause brain and nerve damage.
In Lake Charles and Westlake, along the southwestern part of Louisiana, residents are advised to avoid swimming in and eating certain fish from the Calcasieu River due to unsafe levels of chemicals, including dioxins, that can cause cancer and other health problems.
The Westlake Eagle US 2 Lake Charles plastics chemical plant, which makes several toxic ingredients for PVC plastics, is one of the country’s largest dischargers of dioxin, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) records.
In 2023, the Lake Charles plant discharged an average of 83 million gallons of wastewater each day into the Calcasieu River. This included 5.3 million pounds of suspended solids, which can harm fish, as well as 348 pounds of copper, 60 pounds of lead and 3.5 pounds of mercury.
Recreational fishermen are not going to pay premium prices to reel in toxic fish. So the industry has gone elsewhere. “They used to call Louisiana the ‘Sportsman’s Paradise,’” said Paul Geary, a retired union organizer and fisherman from Lake Charles. “It’s no longer the sportsman’s paradise because of the impacts of the petrochemical industry.”
Others who rely on the river for food have ended up in local cancer wards.
Ike Guidry, 65, has fished in Lake Charles his whole life and relied on fish from the Calcasieu River as a staple of his diet. In February, he was diagnosed with cancer and said that he fears his lifelong fish consumption put him at increased risk.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what I had to go through,” Guidry said, pointing at the scar on his neck, where he had surgery to remove his glands amid 35 radiation treatments and eight chemotherapy sessions.
He believes that he was almost killed by the Calcasieu River’s waters and the invisible plastics byproducts from the Westlake facility. “They shouldn’t be allowed to put people in harm’s way,” he said. “If the pollution makes me sick, or kills the fish, they ought to be held accountable.”
To reduce the levels of pollution seen in Lake Charles and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, the Environmental Integrity Project recommends that the EPA update its wastewater regulations to keep pace with advances in technology, as required by the Clean Water Act.
Some of the federally recognized pollutants are also being released at levels that violate Clean Water Act permits. In those cases, the group recommends, pollution could be better controlled if the EPA and state agencies increase enforcement and penalties. From 2021 to 2023, more than 80% of facilities exceeded pollution limits in their permits but only 14% faced financial penalties, the report found.
The fight against Formosa Plastics in St. James Parish
For Jo Banner, co-founder of The Descendants Project, the first days of the final negotiating session have connected environmental justice advocates from around the world.
Banner is working to bring concerns from Louisiana’s fenceline communities to the global stage, to share how some of the world’s biggest plastics plants – sited in Louisiana – affect her and her neighbors in Louisiana’s historically Black, River Parish communities.
Residents of St. James Parish have taken some of their concerns about the petrochemical industry to federal court. In October, members of Inclusive Louisiana, Rise St. James and Mount Triumph Baptist Church argued that parish officials steer hazardous industries, such as plastics plants, into the majority-Black 4th and 5th districts while explicitly protecting whiter communities.
In the historically Black community of Welcome, Sharon Lavigne, 72, founded Rise St. James and has become a prominent voice opposing the construction of a massive plastics manufacturing facility in her backyard.
But now, Formosa Plastics Group, a Taiwanese conglomerate, plans to build a $9.4 billion industrial complex, known as the Sunshine Project in Welcome. The complex would encompass 14 petrochemical plants using different toxic chemicals.
As of July 2024, the Sunshine Project is one of 10 new plastics plants planned for construction in the U.S., along with 24 proposed expansions.
In October, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found that Louisiana’s petrochemical industry is declining.
But companies are still moving forward with highly risky projects, which could tank financially if worldwide reductions in plastic use continue.
S&P Global Ratings warned last year that the Formosa Plastics plant slated for St. James is one such high-risk investment, which undermines the company’s credit position. The proposed complex would produce ethylene and polyethylene for sale in the single-use plastics market.
In April, a survey of 24,000 people in 32 countries commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund and the Plastic Free Foundation found that 85% of respondents want the U.N. Global Plastics Treaty to include a ban on single-use plastics.
Now, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and other environmental advocates are calling on the U.N. negotiators to fulfill the promise, two years and five international meetings in the making, to create a binding instrument to reduce plastic pollution.
“At its core, plastic pollution is a non-partisan issue – evident by the vast majority of countries who have called for decisive measures to tackle the primary drivers of this crisis,” said Erin Simon, a vice president at WWF and an expert in plastics who is leading the fund’s efforts to advocate for a global plastics treaty.
For Banner, who has fought within Louisiana to limit toxins in her backyard, the conference solidified her stance that plastic production is not only harmful locally – but also globally. And scientists agree with her; experts warn that plastics pollution is a global human health crisis that threatens planetary boundaries, according to new research published in the journal One Earth.
“It really warms my heart that people around the world care about what’s happening to us,” Banner said. “We’re still standing firm that a cap on plastic production is needed.”
