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Companies are lobbying for credits for the reduction of plastic pollution to be allowed in the first legally binding UN plastics treaty, despite concerns by environmental groups that it will fund solutions such as the burning of waste.
Danone, which owns bottled water brands Evian and Volvic, is one of the consumer groups that has explored the use of plastic credits to pay for the recovery of tens of thousands of tonnes of plastic in Indonesia, aided by the environmental offsets registry and certification group Verra.
But the company has suspended its plans, following complaints by local residents about pollution and illness from the waste operations, according to documents obtained by Greenpeace’s investigative unit Unearthed.
Big plastic producers, led by petrochemical companies, as well as business groups are lobbying for concessions to be introduced to the UN treaty under negotiation in Canada this week.
Similar to the concept of carbon offsets, plastic offsets are a financial mechanism that allows companies to balance the plastic waste they collect against the waste they produce, theoretically cancelling out the plastic they produce or use. The plastic credits can also be traded.
The Washington-based Verra is among the organisations advocating for offsets to be included in the plastics treaty. In written recommendations to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, Verra argued that the legally binding instrument should promote the use of “high-integrity credits”.
It also hosted side events at the talks in Ottawa, promoting a “plastic waste reduction-linked bond”, alongside the World Bank.
In Indonesia, Danone collaborated with waste management company Reciki to establish five recycling facilities around the country that were owned and operated by the local partner.
But in May last year Verra suspended work on the offsets behind the project after “substantive comments from stakeholders”, according to the documents.
At one of the facilities, the waste was to be processed using mechanical recycling and by turning the low-value plastic into “refuse derived fuel”, which is made from burning and compression.
Locals have complained the site was built too close to residential areas, and reported health complaints such as headaches, nausea, breathing difficulties, sleeping problems and vertigo because of the fumes from the facility, according to letters sent to both Verra and Danone. A foul-smelling liquid had seeped from the site into residents’ yards, they claimed.
Danone did not comment on the specific complaints but said it supported a legally binding and ambitious plastics treaty and had sought to address the unnecessary use of plastics in supply chains. “Voluntary action by individual companies can only ever be one part of the solution,” it noted.
“We explored how plastic credits could be part of a holistic approach to tackling waste, through project certifications via the Verra scheme, but we believe that we still need more research on their effectiveness and have therefore not purchased credits,” it said.
Yuyun Ismawati, founder of the environmental group Nexus3 Foundation in Indonesia, said plastic offsetting allowed corporations to fund damaging false solutions, such as the burning of plastic. “This approach releases the toxic chemicals in plastics and increases community health risks for cancer and other non-communicable diseases,” she said.
A study by non-profit campaign group Break Free from Plastic found that 86 per cent of projects on the Philippines-based Plastic Credit Exchange, the first plastic offset project database, generated credits from burning.
“Coprocessing [burning waste for fuel or other raw materials] is often the only viable option for those materials that are not recyclable,” said Sebastian DiGrande, chief executive at PCX Markets. This was “an internationally accepted method for energy recovery of plastic waste, and widely utilised in Europe and other markets around the world”.
The non-profit group also calculated that 22 per cent of projects on the Verra database involved burning. Verra said that none of the credits it had issued to date were for activities that use incineration to deal with collected plastic.
It took the stakeholder comments “extremely seriously”, it said, and had placed the Danone plastic credits project on hold following the receipt of the complaints. It added that the project had been registered for “accounting-only” purposes, and had never issued plastic credits.
Plastic credits were not a substitute for companies in tackling their “upstream” activities, Verra said. “As we know, plastic credits alone cannot tackle the plastic pollution problem. We have to mitigate plastic waste across the whole value chain.”
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