The bottling plant in Hapur has been under scrutiny by the National Green Tribunal India’s ‘Green Court ‘– since 2015, and a number of inspections by government regulators have found the plant to be flouting environmental laws in India, and also operating without valid licenses, or No Objection Certificate (NOC).

Egregious Pollution

Coca-Cola has had ample time to rectify the pollution violations, and the company had prior notice before inspections. Yet, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), India’’s top environmental regulatory agency, and the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB), the state’’s primary environmental regulatory agency have continued to find serious pollution violations by the Coca-Cola company, including:

• Operating without a valid license, or No Objection Certificate, both in 2015 and currently in 2016

• Of the two Effluent Treatment Plants at the plant (one for medium and the other for high strength organic wastewater), the ETP for the high strength organic wastewater was not working and in “defunct” state

 

• Discharging wastewater into a pond located 1.5 kilometers from the plant which has been found to be faulty in design

 

• Encouraging farmers to use the water from the pond for irrigation, even as pond water tested found “it is not complying the general standards in respect to TSS, COD, BOD and Coliforms.” Fecal Coliform, an indicator of raw sewage, was found to exceed the standard by 3,400 times in the pond water!

 

• The boilers and the diesel generator sets in the plant were violating air pollution laws

 

• The plant has two Sewage Treatment Plants and both were “non-operational and in the junk state”

 

The shocking findings led the CPCB to recommend in December 2015 that the bottling plant’’s juice production line cease operations because the high strength organic waste was not being treated properly. CPCB also recommended that alternative arrangements for safe drinking water be made for residents in the area, applying the ‘polluter pays’ principle if necessary, since the groundwater has been contaminated with sewage from the untreated effluents.

Hazardous Pollution Continues, In Spite of Warnings

In the most recent report submitted to the National Green Tribunal last month (July 2016), and also seen by the India Resource Center, regulators continued to find problems with Coca-Cola’s pollution management practices.

Some of the problems noted in the latest report including sludge “NOT handled in a scientific and manner”, “sludge drying beds and storage of sludge are not as per norms”, and “maintenance of the pond is not proper – with location of the inlet and outlet at the same corner, resulting in immediate discharge and overflow of the effluents, and a number of other continued violations.”

Coca-Cola’s plant in Hapur is categorized as a highly polluting unit that generates hazardous waste.  The latest report also sounded alarm regarding Coca-Cola’s handling of hazardous waste, stating that the room for storage “is not designed in a scientific manner.”  The report notes that all the drums meant to store hazardous waste were in “rusted condition” and “even the bottoms of some of these drums have been detached due to corrosion.” 

The report by CPCB goes on to state that, “it was established that this storage is constructed only for eye-wash purposes”, noting that Coca-Cola could not even provide documents to prove that the hazardous waste generated is sent to an authorized hazardous waste treatment facility, as is required by law.

Coca-Cola – A– Habitual Polluter in India

CPCB’s troubling findings are not surprising – Coca-Cola is a habitual violator of pollution norms in India.

The same plant in Dasna was also found to be violating pollution norms by a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2005, and Coca-Cola officials admitted wrongdoing to the reporter.

In 2003, CPCB found high levels of heavy metals –lead, cadmium, chromium –in most of the waste tested from Coca-Cola bottling plants, including this plant in Dasna which was found to have excessive levels of cadmium and chromium in its sludge.

Coca-Cola’s bottling plant in Plachimada in Kerala was shut down by government regulators in 2005 for heavy metal pollution.

The same year, BBC’s Radio 4 tested sludge from Coca-Cola’’s plant in Plachimada which was being distributed to farmers as fertilizer, and found it to contain excessive levels of cadmium and lead. 

In 2007, a team (including the India Resource Center) visited a Coca-Cola franchisee pIant in Ballia in Uttar Pradesh and found illegal dumping of waste across the premises. In 2008, the CPCB also tested waste from Coca-Cola plants at different locations to understand the constant source of heavy metals in Coca-Cola waste, and linked it to the ink used in the logos painted on the bottles.

““The arrogance and incompetence of this company is beyond belief””, said Amit Srivastava of the international campaigning group, India Resource Center.  “The company has been given enough notices to clean up its act but it still refuses to do so in India, and operates without the necessary licenses.

“The plant should be closed permanently, and the Government must move to force Coca-Cola to compensate the community in the area who will bear the brunt of Coca-Cola’’s pollution for years to come, as well as workers in the plant who will lose their jobs through no fault of their own.””

For more on this story, visit www.IndiaResource.org

 

 

 

In December 2015 the UK Government introduced its long-awaited sustainability and greenhouse gas standards for biomass. Biomass which fails to meet the standards is no longer eligible for subsidies.

This is the Government’s answer to growing concerns about the impacts of large-scale biomass electricity on forests and on the climate.

Media reports describing how biodiverse forests in the southern US are being clearcut in part to make wood pellets for UK power stations had questioned the rationale behind renewable energy subsidies going to electricity produced at the expense of forests, and in particular to Drax, the vast coal and biomass fired power station in Yorkshire.

Drax is receiving around £1 million in public subsidies every single day for burning pellets made from 12 million tonnes of wood a year. The power station continues to burn up to 6 million tonnes of coal annually, too.

Virtually all of the wood pellets it burns are imported, and the majority come from the southern US, mostly from the North American Coastal Plain region, which was recognised as a Global Biodiversity Hotspot earlier this year.

Some of Drax’s pellets come from clearcut coastal swamp forests

US conservation NGOs have provided clear evidence that some of Drax’s pellets are coming from the clearcutting of coastal swamp forests, which are one of the most biodiverse temperate forest and aquatic habitats in the world. Needless to say, burning wood from clearcut forests is the very opposite of low-carbon.

If the biomass standards were in any way credible, one would expect Drax and its investors to be worried. Drax’s share price has dipped repeatedly in response to various policy announcements in recent years – but the introduction of the biomass standards didn’t cause any such a downturn.

The standards have had one dubious ‘success’ though: Judging by the replies from MPs to letters protesting against Drax’s subsidies, passed on to Biofuelwatch by constituents, the standards have helped convince the majority of MPs that problems with forest destruction and high carbon emissions for biomass electricity have now been taken care of.

Soon after the biomass standards were published, Biofuelwatch published a detailed analysis of all that was wrong with them. Amongst other things, the greenhouse gas standards ignore all of the carbon emissions associated with logging as well as burning biomass, and there is no credible independent system for verifying ‘sustainability’ claims made by companies.

According to official Guidance, the Sustainable Biomass Partnership (SBP) is the only certification scheme which can ‘prove’ 100% that the sustainability standards are being met.

Note that the sustainability standards, or ‘land requirements’, are separate from the greenhouse gas standards. However, meeting the greenhouse gas standards is easy for companies because they are allowed to ignore that vast majority of carbon emissions associated with bioenergy.

Drax buys sustainability certification from the Sustainable Biomass Partnership

SBP certification for Drax’s own pellet production in the US exposes just how meaningless the sustainability standards are, and shows why Drax has had no reason to worry about them.

The certification was granted on the first of August and applies to two pellet mills built by Drax in Louisiana and Mississippi. Drax has also applied for a certificate which would deem all of its biomass electricity to be sustainable, however the latter is still pending.

NGO evidence showing that pellets are being made from clearcut wetland forests relates to Enviva, Drax’s main supplier, rather than Drax’s own pellet mills, where Drax claims to be mainly using wood from pine plantations.

This may well be true, at least for now, though it doesn’t make the pellets sustainable. Across the southern US, industrial pine plantations continue to be expanded at the expense of biodiverse forests. Forest campaigners from the Dogwood Alliance in the US described the plantations that Drax is relying on for its wood:

“Orderly rows as far as they eye can see like a cornfield, regular spraying of fertilizers and herbicides, and plantations are so quiet because they’re almost devoid of wildlife. Before they can grow into majestic trees, the heavy machinery chops them down like mowing a lawn.”

Cutting down and burning a plantation tree still results in high carbon emissions, although the SBP does not even look at climate impacts when assessing ‘sustainability’. SBP certification sheds little light on Drax’s practices and does nothing to ensure that the company won’t use wood from biodiverse forests in future.

An initiative made up entirely of energy companies

The SBP was established in 2013 as a successor to the Initiative Wood Pellet Buyers, which had helped drive the emergence and expansion of the global wood pellet trade. It is made up entirely of energy companies.

Like other voluntary certification schemes, the SBP relies on external ‘auditors’. These are consultancy firms which offer their services to a variety of companies seeking different types of certification under different schemes and standards. This allows Drax to claim: “The SBP Board has no involvement in the certification decision process and has no opportunity to influence its outcome.”

In fact, there is no need for the SBP Board (chaired by Drax’s CEO) to intervene in a particular certification decision: they were able to ensure their desired outcomes by setting the standards, determining what type and level of investigations and verification are required, and devised the appeals procedure.

The appeals procedure is only open to pellet producers, energy companies and prospective certifiers who have had an adverse decision against them, but not to civil society groups. Companies applying for a certificate choose their own auditor amongst the list of SBP-approved consultancies and pay them for their services.

This creates a strong incentive for certifying consultancies to provide the desired service to their ‘customers’, and to be biased in favour of granting certificates. This is a generic problem of voluntary certification schemes.

Drax’s SBP auditors: Consultants with a track-record of granting controversial certificates

The certification company chosen by Drax is SCS Global Services (‘SCS’), and it is no stranger to controversy. Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificates awarded as a result of SCS assessments include:

• Certification of the Jari forestry project in Brazil from 2004. In 2015, the certificate was suspended after government authorities raided the company’s offices on suspicion of massive fraud and illegal timber laundering. SCS had noted problems with the company’s documentation but had chosen to certify them regardless;

• Certification of Green Diamond Resource Company in California, despite what the Environmental Protection Information Center described as “Green Diamond’s aggressive clearcut logging, their legacy of toxic pollution, their decades long history of antagonistic relationships with local communities and civil society organizations, and their corporate culture of greenwash, impunity, and lack of accountability”.

SBP certification is even less onerous than FSC certification. SCS spent a total of just seven hours inspecting logging operations across two overlapping areas from which Drax’s pellet mills source wood, each with 3.9 million hectares of forest. The SCS reports largely summarise ‘supply base’ reports written by a Drax director.

A simple web search casts doubt on some of the claims accepted by SCS: For example, the certification report states that there are no IUCN Red List species (i.e. endangered or threatened species) in the wider sourcing region. In fact, there are 10 Red List species in Louisiana alone, including the Louisiana Pine Snake which depends on Longleaf pine forests.

Drax’s own report shows that Longleaf pine forms part of the wood mix used by both pellet mills. According to IUCN, ‘intensive pine silviculture’, i.e. pine plantations, are one of two key threats to the species.

The best ‘sustainability’ certificates money can buy

The fact that such a dubious SBP certificate has ensured that all of the pellets produced by Drax will be classed as ‘sustainable’ and thus worthy of subsidies in the UK illustrates the true nature of the Government’s sustainability standards.

Far from holding any companies to account, ‘sustainability’ standards simply allow them to greenwash their activities. Standards themselves are of little importance as long as companies can so easily buy certificates to ‘prove’ compliance with them.

This is yet more evidence to back up the argument made in a declaration by 132 civil society groups that biomass sustainability standards cannot protect forests, and that biomass must be excluded from renewable electricity subsidies.

Almuth Ernsting is co-Director of Biofuelwatch.

“What would happen if it collapsed now?”

We were placidly bobbing on New Zealand’s Tasman Lake, staring up at a wall of ice.

“Well, nothing, to be honest. The lake is so deep, we wouldn’t notice the wave out here. On the bank, it’s a different story. If some ice fell in now, we’re possibly in the safest place you could be – from the tsunami that is. Different story if the glacier calves from underneath.”

This was our guide, Steve, a man of reassuring optimism. Nevertheless, the couple in the front of the craft huddled a little closer.

Steve had expertly steered our small rib through the rafts of ice to our current berth, a short distance offshore from the Tasman Glacier – the country’s largest at 600m thick and 27km long. It was like something out of Game of Thrones, sheer cliffs of ice rose from the murky deep to tower above our heads.

And it was blue. I had seen ice before back home, in the frozen puddles and tractor ruts that riddle Wiltshire’s countryside, but nothing came close to matching this shade of azure.

“It’s to do with the lack of air bubbles.” Steve explained, “The snowfall crushes the underlying ice, squeezing out the air. This purer ice only reflects blue wavelengths.”

Steve turned our attention to a nearby iceberg that had broken off from the glacier.

Up close, the size of these floating peaks was truly intimidating. It was inconceivable to imagine the other 90% concealed underwater, and daunting to contemplate the danger this hidden portion posed. Submerged ice fans out from the iceberg in a shallow shelf below the waterline, and the shelf’s greater buoyancy means it yearns to break free from the main core and rise to the surface. When it does, chaos ensues.

“If the surfacing slabs don’t get us, the main iceberg will – pretty unstable after such a trauma, like as not she’ll flip over. And this ice is a lot denser than the stuff in your fridge, we’d have no chance! But still, a collapse from the main glacier is a whole different situation.”

Big collapses, or ‘calvings’, occur when the unstable end of the glacier breaks off into the lake, and with glaciers such as the Tasman these happen about once every Summer.

“Though this season we’ve had two already, which is strange.” Steve broke off and frowned at the glacier.

So when was the last calving?

“Oh, two nights ago in fact!” Steve recalled.

A silence descended on our vessel.

“But don’t worry,” he added quickly, “calvings don’t usually occur so soon after one another.” tactfully defusing the tension in the boat, if not the glacier. For the Tasman is fast disappearing. In the 1990s the annual retreat was 180m. Today, the ice melts at a shocking 800m per year.

“It’s a shame,” mused Steve, gazing up at the root of the glacier high up in the mountains.  He glanced at some kids in the back of the boat.

 “Sadly, when you all come back here in 50 years, we’ll be doing this tour by helicopter.”

This Author

Ecologist ‘New Voices’ Travel blogger Robbie Trevelyan has just graduated from Bristol University with an MSc in Geology with a special emphasis on environmental issues such a climate change and anthropogenic forcing. He is planning a career as an environmental journalist.

The bottling plant in Hapur has been under scrutiny by the National Green Tribunal India’s ‘Green Court ‘– since 2015, and a number of inspections by government regulators have found the plant to be flouting environmental laws in India, and also operating without valid licenses, or No Objection Certificate (NOC).

Egregious Pollution

Coca-Cola has had ample time to rectify the pollution violations, and the company had prior notice before inspections. Yet, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), India’’s top environmental regulatory agency, and the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB), the state’’s primary environmental regulatory agency have continued to find serious pollution violations by the Coca-Cola company, including:

• Operating without a valid license, or No Objection Certificate, both in 2015 and currently in 2016

• Of the two Effluent Treatment Plants at the plant (one for medium and the other for high strength organic wastewater), the ETP for the high strength organic wastewater was not working and in “defunct” state

 

• Discharging wastewater into a pond located 1.5 kilometers from the plant which has been found to be faulty in design

 

• Encouraging farmers to use the water from the pond for irrigation, even as pond water tested found “it is not complying the general standards in respect to TSS, COD, BOD and Coliforms.” Fecal Coliform, an indicator of raw sewage, was found to exceed the standard by 3,400 times in the pond water!

 

• The boilers and the diesel generator sets in the plant were violating air pollution laws

 

• The plant has two Sewage Treatment Plants and both were “non-operational and in the junk state”

 

The shocking findings led the CPCB to recommend in December 2015 that the bottling plant’’s juice production line cease operations because the high strength organic waste was not being treated properly. CPCB also recommended that alternative arrangements for safe drinking water be made for residents in the area, applying the ‘polluter pays’ principle if necessary, since the groundwater has been contaminated with sewage from the untreated effluents.

Hazardous Pollution Continues, In Spite of Warnings

In the most recent report submitted to the National Green Tribunal last month (July 2016), and also seen by the India Resource Center, regulators continued to find problems with Coca-Cola’s pollution management practices.

Some of the problems noted in the latest report including sludge “NOT handled in a scientific and manner”, “sludge drying beds and storage of sludge are not as per norms”, and “maintenance of the pond is not proper – with location of the inlet and outlet at the same corner, resulting in immediate discharge and overflow of the effluents, and a number of other continued violations.”

Coca-Cola’s plant in Hapur is categorized as a highly polluting unit that generates hazardous waste.  The latest report also sounded alarm regarding Coca-Cola’s handling of hazardous waste, stating that the room for storage “is not designed in a scientific manner.”  The report notes that all the drums meant to store hazardous waste were in “rusted condition” and “even the bottoms of some of these drums have been detached due to corrosion.” 

The report by CPCB goes on to state that, “it was established that this storage is constructed only for eye-wash purposes”, noting that Coca-Cola could not even provide documents to prove that the hazardous waste generated is sent to an authorized hazardous waste treatment facility, as is required by law.

Coca-Cola – A– Habitual Polluter in India

CPCB’s troubling findings are not surprising – Coca-Cola is a habitual violator of pollution norms in India.

The same plant in Dasna was also found to be violating pollution norms by a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2005, and Coca-Cola officials admitted wrongdoing to the reporter.

In 2003, CPCB found high levels of heavy metals –lead, cadmium, chromium –in most of the waste tested from Coca-Cola bottling plants, including this plant in Dasna which was found to have excessive levels of cadmium and chromium in its sludge.

Coca-Cola’s bottling plant in Plachimada in Kerala was shut down by government regulators in 2005 for heavy metal pollution.

The same year, BBC’s Radio 4 tested sludge from Coca-Cola’’s plant in Plachimada which was being distributed to farmers as fertilizer, and found it to contain excessive levels of cadmium and lead. 

In 2007, a team (including the India Resource Center) visited a Coca-Cola franchisee pIant in Ballia in Uttar Pradesh and found illegal dumping of waste across the premises. In 2008, the CPCB also tested waste from Coca-Cola plants at different locations to understand the constant source of heavy metals in Coca-Cola waste, and linked it to the ink used in the logos painted on the bottles.

““The arrogance and incompetence of this company is beyond belief””, said Amit Srivastava of the international campaigning group, India Resource Center.  “The company has been given enough notices to clean up its act but it still refuses to do so in India, and operates without the necessary licenses.

“The plant should be closed permanently, and the Government must move to force Coca-Cola to compensate the community in the area who will bear the brunt of Coca-Cola’’s pollution for years to come, as well as workers in the plant who will lose their jobs through no fault of their own.””

For more on this story, visit www.IndiaResource.org

 

 

 

In December 2015 the UK Government introduced its long-awaited sustainability and greenhouse gas standards for biomass. Biomass which fails to meet the standards is no longer eligible for subsidies.

This is the Government’s answer to growing concerns about the impacts of large-scale biomass electricity on forests and on the climate.

Media reports describing how biodiverse forests in the southern US are being clearcut in part to make wood pellets for UK power stations had questioned the rationale behind renewable energy subsidies going to electricity produced at the expense of forests, and in particular to Drax, the vast coal and biomass fired power station in Yorkshire.

Drax is receiving around £1 million in public subsidies every single day for burning pellets made from 12 million tonnes of wood a year. The power station continues to burn up to 6 million tonnes of coal annually, too.

Virtually all of the wood pellets it burns are imported, and the majority come from the southern US, mostly from the North American Coastal Plain region, which was recognised as a Global Biodiversity Hotspot earlier this year.

Some of Drax’s pellets come from clearcut coastal swamp forests

US conservation NGOs have provided clear evidence that some of Drax’s pellets are coming from the clearcutting of coastal swamp forests, which are one of the most biodiverse temperate forest and aquatic habitats in the world. Needless to say, burning wood from clearcut forests is the very opposite of low-carbon.

If the biomass standards were in any way credible, one would expect Drax and its investors to be worried. Drax’s share price has dipped repeatedly in response to various policy announcements in recent years – but the introduction of the biomass standards didn’t cause any such a downturn.

The standards have had one dubious ‘success’ though: Judging by the replies from MPs to letters protesting against Drax’s subsidies, passed on to Biofuelwatch by constituents, the standards have helped convince the majority of MPs that problems with forest destruction and high carbon emissions for biomass electricity have now been taken care of.

Soon after the biomass standards were published, Biofuelwatch published a detailed analysis of all that was wrong with them. Amongst other things, the greenhouse gas standards ignore all of the carbon emissions associated with logging as well as burning biomass, and there is no credible independent system for verifying ‘sustainability’ claims made by companies.

According to official Guidance, the Sustainable Biomass Partnership (SBP) is the only certification scheme which can ‘prove’ 100% that the sustainability standards are being met.

Note that the sustainability standards, or ‘land requirements’, are separate from the greenhouse gas standards. However, meeting the greenhouse gas standards is easy for companies because they are allowed to ignore that vast majority of carbon emissions associated with bioenergy.

Drax buys sustainability certification from the Sustainable Biomass Partnership

SBP certification for Drax’s own pellet production in the US exposes just how meaningless the sustainability standards are, and shows why Drax has had no reason to worry about them.

The certification was granted on the first of August and applies to two pellet mills built by Drax in Louisiana and Mississippi. Drax has also applied for a certificate which would deem all of its biomass electricity to be sustainable, however the latter is still pending.

NGO evidence showing that pellets are being made from clearcut wetland forests relates to Enviva, Drax’s main supplier, rather than Drax’s own pellet mills, where Drax claims to be mainly using wood from pine plantations.

This may well be true, at least for now, though it doesn’t make the pellets sustainable. Across the southern US, industrial pine plantations continue to be expanded at the expense of biodiverse forests. Forest campaigners from the Dogwood Alliance in the US described the plantations that Drax is relying on for its wood:

“Orderly rows as far as they eye can see like a cornfield, regular spraying of fertilizers and herbicides, and plantations are so quiet because they’re almost devoid of wildlife. Before they can grow into majestic trees, the heavy machinery chops them down like mowing a lawn.”

Cutting down and burning a plantation tree still results in high carbon emissions, although the SBP does not even look at climate impacts when assessing ‘sustainability’. SBP certification sheds little light on Drax’s practices and does nothing to ensure that the company won’t use wood from biodiverse forests in future.

An initiative made up entirely of energy companies

The SBP was established in 2013 as a successor to the Initiative Wood Pellet Buyers, which had helped drive the emergence and expansion of the global wood pellet trade. It is made up entirely of energy companies.

Like other voluntary certification schemes, the SBP relies on external ‘auditors’. These are consultancy firms which offer their services to a variety of companies seeking different types of certification under different schemes and standards. This allows Drax to claim: “The SBP Board has no involvement in the certification decision process and has no opportunity to influence its outcome.”

In fact, there is no need for the SBP Board (chaired by Drax’s CEO) to intervene in a particular certification decision: they were able to ensure their desired outcomes by setting the standards, determining what type and level of investigations and verification are required, and devised the appeals procedure.

The appeals procedure is only open to pellet producers, energy companies and prospective certifiers who have had an adverse decision against them, but not to civil society groups. Companies applying for a certificate choose their own auditor amongst the list of SBP-approved consultancies and pay them for their services.

This creates a strong incentive for certifying consultancies to provide the desired service to their ‘customers’, and to be biased in favour of granting certificates. This is a generic problem of voluntary certification schemes.

Drax’s SBP auditors: Consultants with a track-record of granting controversial certificates

The certification company chosen by Drax is SCS Global Services (‘SCS’), and it is no stranger to controversy. Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificates awarded as a result of SCS assessments include:

• Certification of the Jari forestry project in Brazil from 2004. In 2015, the certificate was suspended after government authorities raided the company’s offices on suspicion of massive fraud and illegal timber laundering. SCS had noted problems with the company’s documentation but had chosen to certify them regardless;

• Certification of Green Diamond Resource Company in California, despite what the Environmental Protection Information Center described as “Green Diamond’s aggressive clearcut logging, their legacy of toxic pollution, their decades long history of antagonistic relationships with local communities and civil society organizations, and their corporate culture of greenwash, impunity, and lack of accountability”.

SBP certification is even less onerous than FSC certification. SCS spent a total of just seven hours inspecting logging operations across two overlapping areas from which Drax’s pellet mills source wood, each with 3.9 million hectares of forest. The SCS reports largely summarise ‘supply base’ reports written by a Drax director.

A simple web search casts doubt on some of the claims accepted by SCS: For example, the certification report states that there are no IUCN Red List species (i.e. endangered or threatened species) in the wider sourcing region. In fact, there are 10 Red List species in Louisiana alone, including the Louisiana Pine Snake which depends on Longleaf pine forests.

Drax’s own report shows that Longleaf pine forms part of the wood mix used by both pellet mills. According to IUCN, ‘intensive pine silviculture’, i.e. pine plantations, are one of two key threats to the species.

The best ‘sustainability’ certificates money can buy

The fact that such a dubious SBP certificate has ensured that all of the pellets produced by Drax will be classed as ‘sustainable’ and thus worthy of subsidies in the UK illustrates the true nature of the Government’s sustainability standards.

Far from holding any companies to account, ‘sustainability’ standards simply allow them to greenwash their activities. Standards themselves are of little importance as long as companies can so easily buy certificates to ‘prove’ compliance with them.

This is yet more evidence to back up the argument made in a declaration by 132 civil society groups that biomass sustainability standards cannot protect forests, and that biomass must be excluded from renewable electricity subsidies.

Almuth Ernsting is co-Director of Biofuelwatch.

“What would happen if it collapsed now?”

We were placidly bobbing on New Zealand’s Tasman Lake, staring up at a wall of ice.

“Well, nothing, to be honest. The lake is so deep, we wouldn’t notice the wave out here. On the bank, it’s a different story. If some ice fell in now, we’re possibly in the safest place you could be – from the tsunami that is. Different story if the glacier calves from underneath.”

This was our guide, Steve, a man of reassuring optimism. Nevertheless, the couple in the front of the craft huddled a little closer.

Steve had expertly steered our small rib through the rafts of ice to our current berth, a short distance offshore from the Tasman Glacier – the country’s largest at 600m thick and 27km long. It was like something out of Game of Thrones, sheer cliffs of ice rose from the murky deep to tower above our heads.

And it was blue. I had seen ice before back home, in the frozen puddles and tractor ruts that riddle Wiltshire’s countryside, but nothing came close to matching this shade of azure.

“It’s to do with the lack of air bubbles.” Steve explained, “The snowfall crushes the underlying ice, squeezing out the air. This purer ice only reflects blue wavelengths.”

Steve turned our attention to a nearby iceberg that had broken off from the glacier.

Up close, the size of these floating peaks was truly intimidating. It was inconceivable to imagine the other 90% concealed underwater, and daunting to contemplate the danger this hidden portion posed. Submerged ice fans out from the iceberg in a shallow shelf below the waterline, and the shelf’s greater buoyancy means it yearns to break free from the main core and rise to the surface. When it does, chaos ensues.

“If the surfacing slabs don’t get us, the main iceberg will – pretty unstable after such a trauma, like as not she’ll flip over. And this ice is a lot denser than the stuff in your fridge, we’d have no chance! But still, a collapse from the main glacier is a whole different situation.”

Big collapses, or ‘calvings’, occur when the unstable end of the glacier breaks off into the lake, and with glaciers such as the Tasman these happen about once every Summer.

“Though this season we’ve had two already, which is strange.” Steve broke off and frowned at the glacier.

So when was the last calving?

“Oh, two nights ago in fact!” Steve recalled.

A silence descended on our vessel.

“But don’t worry,” he added quickly, “calvings don’t usually occur so soon after one another.” tactfully defusing the tension in the boat, if not the glacier. For the Tasman is fast disappearing. In the 1990s the annual retreat was 180m. Today, the ice melts at a shocking 800m per year.

“It’s a shame,” mused Steve, gazing up at the root of the glacier high up in the mountains.  He glanced at some kids in the back of the boat.

 “Sadly, when you all come back here in 50 years, we’ll be doing this tour by helicopter.”

This Author

Ecologist ‘New Voices’ Travel blogger Robbie Trevelyan has just graduated from Bristol University with an MSc in Geology with a special emphasis on environmental issues such a climate change and anthropogenic forcing. He is planning a career as an environmental journalist.

The bottling plant in Hapur has been under scrutiny by the National Green Tribunal India’s ‘Green Court ‘– since 2015, and a number of inspections by government regulators have found the plant to be flouting environmental laws in India, and also operating without valid licenses, or No Objection Certificate (NOC).

Egregious Pollution

Coca-Cola has had ample time to rectify the pollution violations, and the company had prior notice before inspections. Yet, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), India’’s top environmental regulatory agency, and the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB), the state’’s primary environmental regulatory agency have continued to find serious pollution violations by the Coca-Cola company, including:

• Operating without a valid license, or No Objection Certificate, both in 2015 and currently in 2016

• Of the two Effluent Treatment Plants at the plant (one for medium and the other for high strength organic wastewater), the ETP for the high strength organic wastewater was not working and in “defunct” state

 

• Discharging wastewater into a pond located 1.5 kilometers from the plant which has been found to be faulty in design

 

• Encouraging farmers to use the water from the pond for irrigation, even as pond water tested found “it is not complying the general standards in respect to TSS, COD, BOD and Coliforms.” Fecal Coliform, an indicator of raw sewage, was found to exceed the standard by 3,400 times in the pond water!

 

• The boilers and the diesel generator sets in the plant were violating air pollution laws

 

• The plant has two Sewage Treatment Plants and both were “non-operational and in the junk state”

 

The shocking findings led the CPCB to recommend in December 2015 that the bottling plant’’s juice production line cease operations because the high strength organic waste was not being treated properly. CPCB also recommended that alternative arrangements for safe drinking water be made for residents in the area, applying the ‘polluter pays’ principle if necessary, since the groundwater has been contaminated with sewage from the untreated effluents.

Hazardous Pollution Continues, In Spite of Warnings

In the most recent report submitted to the National Green Tribunal last month (July 2016), and also seen by the India Resource Center, regulators continued to find problems with Coca-Cola’s pollution management practices.

Some of the problems noted in the latest report including sludge “NOT handled in a scientific and manner”, “sludge drying beds and storage of sludge are not as per norms”, and “maintenance of the pond is not proper – with location of the inlet and outlet at the same corner, resulting in immediate discharge and overflow of the effluents, and a number of other continued violations.”

Coca-Cola’s plant in Hapur is categorized as a highly polluting unit that generates hazardous waste.  The latest report also sounded alarm regarding Coca-Cola’s handling of hazardous waste, stating that the room for storage “is not designed in a scientific manner.”  The report notes that all the drums meant to store hazardous waste were in “rusted condition” and “even the bottoms of some of these drums have been detached due to corrosion.” 

The report by CPCB goes on to state that, “it was established that this storage is constructed only for eye-wash purposes”, noting that Coca-Cola could not even provide documents to prove that the hazardous waste generated is sent to an authorized hazardous waste treatment facility, as is required by law.

Coca-Cola – A– Habitual Polluter in India

CPCB’s troubling findings are not surprising – Coca-Cola is a habitual violator of pollution norms in India.

The same plant in Dasna was also found to be violating pollution norms by a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2005, and Coca-Cola officials admitted wrongdoing to the reporter.

In 2003, CPCB found high levels of heavy metals –lead, cadmium, chromium –in most of the waste tested from Coca-Cola bottling plants, including this plant in Dasna which was found to have excessive levels of cadmium and chromium in its sludge.

Coca-Cola’s bottling plant in Plachimada in Kerala was shut down by government regulators in 2005 for heavy metal pollution.

The same year, BBC’s Radio 4 tested sludge from Coca-Cola’’s plant in Plachimada which was being distributed to farmers as fertilizer, and found it to contain excessive levels of cadmium and lead. 

In 2007, a team (including the India Resource Center) visited a Coca-Cola franchisee pIant in Ballia in Uttar Pradesh and found illegal dumping of waste across the premises. In 2008, the CPCB also tested waste from Coca-Cola plants at different locations to understand the constant source of heavy metals in Coca-Cola waste, and linked it to the ink used in the logos painted on the bottles.

““The arrogance and incompetence of this company is beyond belief””, said Amit Srivastava of the international campaigning group, India Resource Center.  “The company has been given enough notices to clean up its act but it still refuses to do so in India, and operates without the necessary licenses.

“The plant should be closed permanently, and the Government must move to force Coca-Cola to compensate the community in the area who will bear the brunt of Coca-Cola’’s pollution for years to come, as well as workers in the plant who will lose their jobs through no fault of their own.””

For more on this story, visit www.IndiaResource.org

 

 

 

In December 2015 the UK Government introduced its long-awaited sustainability and greenhouse gas standards for biomass. Biomass which fails to meet the standards is no longer eligible for subsidies.

This is the Government’s answer to growing concerns about the impacts of large-scale biomass electricity on forests and on the climate.

Media reports describing how biodiverse forests in the southern US are being clearcut in part to make wood pellets for UK power stations had questioned the rationale behind renewable energy subsidies going to electricity produced at the expense of forests, and in particular to Drax, the vast coal and biomass fired power station in Yorkshire.

Drax is receiving around £1 million in public subsidies every single day for burning pellets made from 12 million tonnes of wood a year. The power station continues to burn up to 6 million tonnes of coal annually, too.

Virtually all of the wood pellets it burns are imported, and the majority come from the southern US, mostly from the North American Coastal Plain region, which was recognised as a Global Biodiversity Hotspot earlier this year.

Some of Drax’s pellets come from clearcut coastal swamp forests

US conservation NGOs have provided clear evidence that some of Drax’s pellets are coming from the clearcutting of coastal swamp forests, which are one of the most biodiverse temperate forest and aquatic habitats in the world. Needless to say, burning wood from clearcut forests is the very opposite of low-carbon.

If the biomass standards were in any way credible, one would expect Drax and its investors to be worried. Drax’s share price has dipped repeatedly in response to various policy announcements in recent years – but the introduction of the biomass standards didn’t cause any such a downturn.

The standards have had one dubious ‘success’ though: Judging by the replies from MPs to letters protesting against Drax’s subsidies, passed on to Biofuelwatch by constituents, the standards have helped convince the majority of MPs that problems with forest destruction and high carbon emissions for biomass electricity have now been taken care of.

Soon after the biomass standards were published, Biofuelwatch published a detailed analysis of all that was wrong with them. Amongst other things, the greenhouse gas standards ignore all of the carbon emissions associated with logging as well as burning biomass, and there is no credible independent system for verifying ‘sustainability’ claims made by companies.

According to official Guidance, the Sustainable Biomass Partnership (SBP) is the only certification scheme which can ‘prove’ 100% that the sustainability standards are being met.

Note that the sustainability standards, or ‘land requirements’, are separate from the greenhouse gas standards. However, meeting the greenhouse gas standards is easy for companies because they are allowed to ignore that vast majority of carbon emissions associated with bioenergy.

Drax buys sustainability certification from the Sustainable Biomass Partnership

SBP certification for Drax’s own pellet production in the US exposes just how meaningless the sustainability standards are, and shows why Drax has had no reason to worry about them.

The certification was granted on the first of August and applies to two pellet mills built by Drax in Louisiana and Mississippi. Drax has also applied for a certificate which would deem all of its biomass electricity to be sustainable, however the latter is still pending.

NGO evidence showing that pellets are being made from clearcut wetland forests relates to Enviva, Drax’s main supplier, rather than Drax’s own pellet mills, where Drax claims to be mainly using wood from pine plantations.

This may well be true, at least for now, though it doesn’t make the pellets sustainable. Across the southern US, industrial pine plantations continue to be expanded at the expense of biodiverse forests. Forest campaigners from the Dogwood Alliance in the US described the plantations that Drax is relying on for its wood:

“Orderly rows as far as they eye can see like a cornfield, regular spraying of fertilizers and herbicides, and plantations are so quiet because they’re almost devoid of wildlife. Before they can grow into majestic trees, the heavy machinery chops them down like mowing a lawn.”

Cutting down and burning a plantation tree still results in high carbon emissions, although the SBP does not even look at climate impacts when assessing ‘sustainability’. SBP certification sheds little light on Drax’s practices and does nothing to ensure that the company won’t use wood from biodiverse forests in future.

An initiative made up entirely of energy companies

The SBP was established in 2013 as a successor to the Initiative Wood Pellet Buyers, which had helped drive the emergence and expansion of the global wood pellet trade. It is made up entirely of energy companies.

Like other voluntary certification schemes, the SBP relies on external ‘auditors’. These are consultancy firms which offer their services to a variety of companies seeking different types of certification under different schemes and standards. This allows Drax to claim: “The SBP Board has no involvement in the certification decision process and has no opportunity to influence its outcome.”

In fact, there is no need for the SBP Board (chaired by Drax’s CEO) to intervene in a particular certification decision: they were able to ensure their desired outcomes by setting the standards, determining what type and level of investigations and verification are required, and devised the appeals procedure.

The appeals procedure is only open to pellet producers, energy companies and prospective certifiers who have had an adverse decision against them, but not to civil society groups. Companies applying for a certificate choose their own auditor amongst the list of SBP-approved consultancies and pay them for their services.

This creates a strong incentive for certifying consultancies to provide the desired service to their ‘customers’, and to be biased in favour of granting certificates. This is a generic problem of voluntary certification schemes.

Drax’s SBP auditors: Consultants with a track-record of granting controversial certificates

The certification company chosen by Drax is SCS Global Services (‘SCS’), and it is no stranger to controversy. Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificates awarded as a result of SCS assessments include:

• Certification of the Jari forestry project in Brazil from 2004. In 2015, the certificate was suspended after government authorities raided the company’s offices on suspicion of massive fraud and illegal timber laundering. SCS had noted problems with the company’s documentation but had chosen to certify them regardless;

• Certification of Green Diamond Resource Company in California, despite what the Environmental Protection Information Center described as “Green Diamond’s aggressive clearcut logging, their legacy of toxic pollution, their decades long history of antagonistic relationships with local communities and civil society organizations, and their corporate culture of greenwash, impunity, and lack of accountability”.

SBP certification is even less onerous than FSC certification. SCS spent a total of just seven hours inspecting logging operations across two overlapping areas from which Drax’s pellet mills source wood, each with 3.9 million hectares of forest. The SCS reports largely summarise ‘supply base’ reports written by a Drax director.

A simple web search casts doubt on some of the claims accepted by SCS: For example, the certification report states that there are no IUCN Red List species (i.e. endangered or threatened species) in the wider sourcing region. In fact, there are 10 Red List species in Louisiana alone, including the Louisiana Pine Snake which depends on Longleaf pine forests.

Drax’s own report shows that Longleaf pine forms part of the wood mix used by both pellet mills. According to IUCN, ‘intensive pine silviculture’, i.e. pine plantations, are one of two key threats to the species.

The best ‘sustainability’ certificates money can buy

The fact that such a dubious SBP certificate has ensured that all of the pellets produced by Drax will be classed as ‘sustainable’ and thus worthy of subsidies in the UK illustrates the true nature of the Government’s sustainability standards.

Far from holding any companies to account, ‘sustainability’ standards simply allow them to greenwash their activities. Standards themselves are of little importance as long as companies can so easily buy certificates to ‘prove’ compliance with them.

This is yet more evidence to back up the argument made in a declaration by 132 civil society groups that biomass sustainability standards cannot protect forests, and that biomass must be excluded from renewable electricity subsidies.

Almuth Ernsting is co-Director of Biofuelwatch.

“What would happen if it collapsed now?”

We were placidly bobbing on New Zealand’s Tasman Lake, staring up at a wall of ice.

“Well, nothing, to be honest. The lake is so deep, we wouldn’t notice the wave out here. On the bank, it’s a different story. If some ice fell in now, we’re possibly in the safest place you could be – from the tsunami that is. Different story if the glacier calves from underneath.”

This was our guide, Steve, a man of reassuring optimism. Nevertheless, the couple in the front of the craft huddled a little closer.

Steve had expertly steered our small rib through the rafts of ice to our current berth, a short distance offshore from the Tasman Glacier – the country’s largest at 600m thick and 27km long. It was like something out of Game of Thrones, sheer cliffs of ice rose from the murky deep to tower above our heads.

And it was blue. I had seen ice before back home, in the frozen puddles and tractor ruts that riddle Wiltshire’s countryside, but nothing came close to matching this shade of azure.

“It’s to do with the lack of air bubbles.” Steve explained, “The snowfall crushes the underlying ice, squeezing out the air. This purer ice only reflects blue wavelengths.”

Steve turned our attention to a nearby iceberg that had broken off from the glacier.

Up close, the size of these floating peaks was truly intimidating. It was inconceivable to imagine the other 90% concealed underwater, and daunting to contemplate the danger this hidden portion posed. Submerged ice fans out from the iceberg in a shallow shelf below the waterline, and the shelf’s greater buoyancy means it yearns to break free from the main core and rise to the surface. When it does, chaos ensues.

“If the surfacing slabs don’t get us, the main iceberg will – pretty unstable after such a trauma, like as not she’ll flip over. And this ice is a lot denser than the stuff in your fridge, we’d have no chance! But still, a collapse from the main glacier is a whole different situation.”

Big collapses, or ‘calvings’, occur when the unstable end of the glacier breaks off into the lake, and with glaciers such as the Tasman these happen about once every Summer.

“Though this season we’ve had two already, which is strange.” Steve broke off and frowned at the glacier.

So when was the last calving?

“Oh, two nights ago in fact!” Steve recalled.

A silence descended on our vessel.

“But don’t worry,” he added quickly, “calvings don’t usually occur so soon after one another.” tactfully defusing the tension in the boat, if not the glacier. For the Tasman is fast disappearing. In the 1990s the annual retreat was 180m. Today, the ice melts at a shocking 800m per year.

“It’s a shame,” mused Steve, gazing up at the root of the glacier high up in the mountains.  He glanced at some kids in the back of the boat.

 “Sadly, when you all come back here in 50 years, we’ll be doing this tour by helicopter.”

This Author

Ecologist ‘New Voices’ Travel blogger Robbie Trevelyan has just graduated from Bristol University with an MSc in Geology with a special emphasis on environmental issues such a climate change and anthropogenic forcing. He is planning a career as an environmental journalist.

“What would happen if it collapsed now?”

We were placidly bobbing on New Zealand’s Tasman Lake, staring up at a wall of ice.

“Well, nothing, to be honest. The lake is so deep, we wouldn’t notice the wave out here. On the bank, it’s a different story. If some ice fell in now, we’re possibly in the safest place you could be – from the tsunami that is. Different story if the glacier calves from underneath.”

This was our guide, Steve, a man of reassuring optimism. Nevertheless, the couple in the front of the craft huddled a little closer.

Steve had expertly steered our small rib through the rafts of ice to our current berth, a short distance offshore from the Tasman Glacier – the country’s largest at 600m thick and 27km long. It was like something out of Game of Thrones, sheer cliffs of ice rose from the murky deep to tower above our heads.

And it was blue. I had seen ice before back home, in the frozen puddles and tractor ruts that riddle Wiltshire’s countryside, but nothing came close to matching this shade of azure.

“It’s to do with the lack of air bubbles.” Steve explained, “The snowfall crushes the underlying ice, squeezing out the air. This purer ice only reflects blue wavelengths.”

Steve turned our attention to a nearby iceberg that had broken off from the glacier.

Up close, the size of these floating peaks was truly intimidating. It was inconceivable to imagine the other 90% concealed underwater, and daunting to contemplate the danger this hidden portion posed. Submerged ice fans out from the iceberg in a shallow shelf below the waterline, and the shelf’s greater buoyancy means it yearns to break free from the main core and rise to the surface. When it does, chaos ensues.

“If the surfacing slabs don’t get us, the main iceberg will – pretty unstable after such a trauma, like as not she’ll flip over. And this ice is a lot denser than the stuff in your fridge, we’d have no chance! But still, a collapse from the main glacier is a whole different situation.”

Big collapses, or ‘calvings’, occur when the unstable end of the glacier breaks off into the lake, and with glaciers such as the Tasman these happen about once every Summer.

“Though this season we’ve had two already, which is strange.” Steve broke off and frowned at the glacier.

So when was the last calving?

“Oh, two nights ago in fact!” Steve recalled.

A silence descended on our vessel.

“But don’t worry,” he added quickly, “calvings don’t usually occur so soon after one another.” tactfully defusing the tension in the boat, if not the glacier. For the Tasman is fast disappearing. In the 1990s the annual retreat was 180m. Today, the ice melts at a shocking 800m per year.

“It’s a shame,” mused Steve, gazing up at the root of the glacier high up in the mountains.  He glanced at some kids in the back of the boat.

 “Sadly, when you all come back here in 50 years, we’ll be doing this tour by helicopter.”

This Author

Ecologist ‘New Voices’ Travel blogger Robbie Trevelyan has just graduated from Bristol University with an MSc in Geology with a special emphasis on environmental issues such a climate change and anthropogenic forcing. He is planning a career as an environmental journalist.