The world is in the midst of a perilous plastics and petrochemicals boom that is both disastrous from a health and environmental perspective and foolish from a financial and economic one. Among the companies leading the global expansion of plastic production is the Formosa Plastics Group, a Taiwanese conglomerate that has grown over six decades to become the world’s fourth-largest producer of petrochemicals and plastics.
Formosa Plastics Group: A Serial Offender of Environmental and Human Rights (A Case Study) reflects two years of investigation and analysis of the conglomerate’s history by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), the Center for Biological Diversity, and Earthworks. Critically, the report shows that Formosa Plastics’ long history exemplifies the profound risks that the entire petrochemicals and plastics industry poses to human health, human rights, local ecosystems, and the global climate.
From Point Comfort, Texas, to Ha Tinh, Vietnam; Illiopolis, Illinois; and Yunlin County, Taiwan, the Formosa Plastics Group has left a global track record that demonstrates how the rights and safety of local communities and workers, as well as the environment and public health, have become casualties of corporate profit.
Despite this history, policymakers are allowing Formosa Plastics to expand its operations. The company now plans to build one of the world’s largest petrochemical complexes, dubbed the “Sunshine Project” in St. James Parish, Louisiana, a community already overburdened with pollution from a dozen oil, gas, and petrochemical facilities.
In detailing the past and present impacts of one of the largest corporate players in the industry, this report exposes how the ongoing expansion of plastics and petrochemical production poses profound risks to the environment, human health, human rights, and good governance in the United States and worldwide.
The report examines Formosa Plastics Groups’:
- Corporate Structure and Scandal: a complicated web of subsidiaries and affiliates, overlapping executive leadership positions, and select corporate scandals.
- Petrochemical Products and Their Hazards: principal petrochemical products and the health and safety risks those products pose for workers, communities, and consumers.
- Impacts, Incidents, and Abuses: documented environmental, health, and safety violations at company facilities, including devastating incidents at Sihanoukville, Cambodia; Ha Tinh, Vietnam; Yunlin County, Taiwan; Illiopolis, Illinois; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Point Comfort, Texas.
- Plans for Expansion in the United States: including efforts to construct the “Sunshine Project” mega-complex in St. James Parish, a community in the heart of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley.
- Operations and Growth at Odds with Human Rights: and the risks associated with the company’s operations and growth plans.
Around the world, communities living in the shadow of plastics and petrochemical facilities operated by other companies have experienced similar disasters and tell similar stories — underscoring that the industry itself poses significant and recurring threats. It is not enough to take actions against one corporation in an industry that poses inherent risks to human rights. Solutions to an industry-wide problem must be equally comprehensive.
Based on the findings in this report, local, regional, and national policymakers, regulatory agencies, and financial institutions at all levels should:
- Prevent Formosa Plastics Group from inflicting more harm to people or the environment: Consider the company’s history when reviewing any applications by Formosa Plastics or its affiliates for new permits or direct or indirect economic incentives for new or expanded facilities.
- Hold Formosa Plastics Group accountable for the harms it has already wrought: including its impacts on human rights and the environment. National governments and local authorities should guarantee victims access to justice and effective remedy.
- Protect against similar harms to people and the environment occurring throughout the petrochemicals and plastics production supply chain: Requiring any plastics or petrochemicals company to prove that its operations will not exacerbate public health disparities, climate change, and plastic pollution before it is issued any construction or expansion permits. Community health, worker safety, human rights, and climate protection must be prioritized over promised economic benefits.
Click to download the full report.
Published October 2021.