Dow + “Live Earth” = the Ultimate in Greenwashing?

November 14, 2009

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Since it was announced ten days ago that Dow Chemical would join 2010′s version of Al Gore’s “Live Earth” I’ve been concerned about the Nobel Prize winner’s sense of direction. For several years Dow has been sponsoring “Run For the Planet” marathons, in an effort to draw attention to the world’s need for clean drinking water. Which is a good thing. The downside is that around the world Dow chemical plants are among the worst polluters of nearby drinking water and air.

For the past eighteen months we’ve been working on a film in Louisiana about the relationship between man and water; it’s a relatively easy subject since there’s water everywhere, and every Louisianan has a water story or two or three. But my introduction to the state was nearly twenty years ago, when I went on assignment for Audubon magazine to write about a small town called Morrisonville, in Plaquemine Parish.

A hundred-fifty-year-old town homesteaded by just-freed slaves, in the 1990s it was home to a small core of eighty-seven indigent blacks. Over the years its closest neighbor – Dow Chemical – had expanded its property, and its pollutions, until both butted up against and ran under the small town; it was so close that the company installed alarm radios in each home to serve as alerts in case of an accident or spill (which most refused to turn them on, convinced the company was eavesdropping on them). Here’s what my friend Marylee Orr, founder of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network told the New York Times 20 years ago: “Companies are reducing their problems by moving people instead of reducing accidents and pollution.”

Over the years Dow’s chemical-making processes had badly polluted the local aquifer that lay beneath Morrisonville with vinyl chloride, information the company discovered but did not make public. Instead, when they discovered that the cancer-causing chemicals had spread over several acres just below the earth’s surface, spreading beneath the town, it did the only reasonable thing from a corporate perspective: It tried to buy off any potential complaints and lawsuits. As residents of Morrisonville resident’s began to get sick from the pollution, and as Dow recognized the impact it was having on local waterways, the company stepped up and bought up the town, house by house, moving the residents into shiny new brick houses in a nearby suburb. Though many in Morrisonville were already cancer-tinged, did the chemical company suggest to them it might be because it had polluted their drinking water? No. That would have been something of an inconvenient truth. Instead they simply said they were buying properties in order to move people away from “potential” harm.

Of course Dow’s support of “Live Earth” (I’m hoping to find out how much cash they’re putting into the event) is not completely altruistic or even out of guilt. It’s about growing its business. Turns out they have a sizable water purification business – Dow Water and Process Solutions – they are hoping to grow “by double digits” and participation in “Live Earth” is simply good advertising. (At the NYC press conference announcing Dow’s support, Ian Barbour, general managaer of Dow Water and Process Solutions, told the crowd and gathered participating celebrities (Jessica Biel, Pete Wentz and more), “We want to generate a surge in awareness and level of funding that will make a difference – making a dent in the number of people who don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. We must energize people to get involved.” While helping to solve the global water crisis is a worthwhile humanitarian cause, it is also good for business, he acknowledged, suggesting that Dow Chemical aims to grow its Dow Water & Process Solutions unit by double-digit rates. “We’ve seen average annual growth of 12-15% for our water business in the last decade, and we expect this level of organic growth going forward. We are also looking out for acquisitions, especially of new technologies that can drive down the cost of water purification.”)

Dow’s Louisiana story has been repeated around the globe wherever it has made chemicals (see the story below from ecorazzi.com). My question for Al Gore, his partners at “Live Earth” and the celebrity spokespeople who’ve signed on to promote Dow’s “Run for the Planet” is do they need Dow’s sponsorship badly enough to put up with the obvious bad press they’ll deservedly get for the linkage? Or maybe their goal is to try and “cleanse” the company’s attitude towards clean water and community relationships.

From ecorazzi.com: As more bad news surrounding Dow Chemical and its pollution of a vast river valley in Michigan surfaces, one has to wonder if their sponsorship of Live Earth’s clean water initiative is looking less like social responsibility and more like a giant billboard for irony.

The company recently agreed to help clean up more than 50-miles of the Tittabawassee River after dumping cancer-causing dioxins into it for most of the last century. The contamination has turned the area into one of the nation’s most polluted sites — something the Obama administration decided was in desperate need of government intervention. According to company records, Dow has known since the mid-1960s that dioxins could sicken or even kill people. The EPA even performed independent tests confirming that the chemicals cause cancer and “disrupt the immune and reproductive systems.”
Despite this, Dow has been criticized time and time again for dragging their feet on the matter. “This cleanup can get done, and a company like Dow can afford it,” Tracey Easthope of the Ecology Center told the LA Times. “But we are under no illusions that this will be carried out without constant pressure from concerned citizens.”

If current events aren’t enough to make Live Earth second-guess their partnership with Dow, the company’s handling of the Bhopal cleanup should have been the first red flag. 25 years ago, one of the world’s worst industrial accidents happened in Bhopal after a Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked a deadly gas that spread over the city. 8,000-10,000 people died within the first 72 hours — and 25,000 have died since. According to Wikipedia, some 390 tonnes of toxic chemicals abandoned at the Union Carbide plant continue to pollute the ground water in the region and affect thousands residents of Bhopal who depend on it.

Since Dow Chemical acquired Union Carbide, the company has refused to perform any additional cleanup, saying that UC’s settlement payments have already fulfilled Dow’s financial responsibility for the disaster. However, the on-going contamination of ground water in the region and high rates of cancer have brought heavy criticism on the company; most notably from campaigns fueled by corporate pranksters The Yes Men. In June, 27 members of Congress wrote to Dow Chemical Company CEO Andrew Liveris and Dow’s Board of Directors, urging the company to face their criminal and civil liabilities for the tragedy that occurred at Bhopal. “While thousands continue to suffer, Union Carbide and its successor, Dow Chemical, have yet to be brought to justice,” Congressman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) wrote in the letter. “I appreciate the efforts of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal to raise awareness of the plight of the people of Bhopal. Members of Congress will continue to fight against companies that evade civil and criminal liability by exploiting international borders and legal jurisdictions.”

One wonders how Dow can be so concerned about clean water, but completely ignore or avoid responsibility for environmental dangers that continue to happen under their watch. It’s even more maddening when you see organizations like Live Earth and charity:water jumping into bed with them. Sponsorship means cashflow to pull off important events, but is a company like Dow worth the ethical headache? Should an initiative focused on the water crisis partner with a company that is responsible for some of that damage to begin with?

Short answer: No.

Soneva Fushi, the Definition of ‘Eco-Resort’

March 27, 2009

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Sonu Shivdasani and his wife Eva Malmström Shivdasani, respectively Founder/Chairman/CEO and Creative Director of the Six Senses resorts scattered mostly around Southeast Asia, hardly need another pat on the back. Virtually every travel magazine and association in the world has at some point during the past dozen years awarded them every “best of” award in the book and every “green” group in the world has lauded their sustainable approach to the resort business. What they do need – and nothing would make them happier – are imitators.

Photo: Fiona Stewart

I’ve been around the world and seen a variety of hoteliers trying very hard to reduce their property’s footprint as well as every bizarre stretch imaginable to claim “eco-resort” status … whatever that term has come to mean. In far too many cases resorts add “eco-resort” to their promotional literature based simply on having placed a card on the side table next to the bed that says if you hang your used towel on the back of the door rather than toss it on the floor, they won’t wash it … thus saving all that hot water and suds. Which is a start. But Sonu, Eva and their teams around the world go so much farther. If every hotelier and resort followed their model, carbon neutrality would quickly become the status quo among resorts of all stars.

Here in the Maldives, Soneva Fushi is nearest to Sonu and Eva’s hearts because it was their first hotel (today their portfolio boasts 26 resorts either open or under development and 41 spas they either own or manage). Sonu – born in London to an Indian family that made a fortune exporting oil and more from Nigeria – leased the jungled island in 1990, in the heart of the Baa atoll. Then in his late 20s, he intended it as a gift for his wife, a former Swedish fashion model.

His idea was to build a kind of Robinson Crusoe escape for the two of them. But … one thing led to another and five years later they opened their first hotel; today the 65-villa island hideaway has made all those lists of both the most luxurious and most green in the world. Which was the goal from the beginning. (Forty percent of their guests are returnees and have been labeled Slow-Lifers: Sustainable – Local – Organic – Wholesome Learning – Inspiring – Fun – Experiences.)

Photo: Fiona Stewart

So … what does qualify as a super-green resort these days? Here it includes a brand new, island-wide recycling eco-center. Air conditioning provided from a unique underwater system that delivers cold water from the depths of the ocean (a $1 million investment that Sonu anticipates will pay for itself in four years.) An organic garden. Recycled … everything, from jute garbage bags to elephant dung paper. A carbon offset program (two percent of every villa rental goes into a fund to offset pollution created by the international flights, float plane and boat rides necessary to get here.) A heat recovery system, which captures heat off the island’s generators for all those long hot showers. Filtered drinking water and sparkling water made on-site. And, by September, the whole operation will be entirely solar.

“We have committed to being completely carbon neutral by the end of next year (2010),” says Sonu, who I first met here in 2005, just weeks just after the tsunami waves raced across the Maldives and through his resort.

The country’s new president is following Soneva Fushi’s example closely. One week ago Mohammed Nasheed committed to making his country the first carbon neutral country in the world by 2020. Among the first persons he called was Sonu. “The minister of tourism and minister of environment have been here many times,” Soneva Fushi’s general manager Philippe Cavory says. “They are all very interested in how we actually do the things we say we’re going to do.”

Cavory points out that most hoteliers would look at Sonu’s way of doing business and scoff at its seemingly high cost, i.e. 400 local employees when 200 could do the job or the experimental air conditioning system that required $1 million up front. “Most people in the hotel business would see that as too much. But the thing about Sonu is that he’s not looking at what’s going to happen ten years from now, he’s looking at 200 years from now. He wants to keep this area clean and growing and he wants to keep the employees happy because he imagines their great-great-grandkids working as waiters here one day.”

Best of all, no luxury sacrificed due to all the green-ness. Sonu is not against fun either; Soneva Fushi boasts the only drive-in theater in the Maldives, though everyone arrives by bicycle rather than car.

Photo: Fiona Stewart

While I admire all of Sonu’s sustainability efforts, what I most admire is the resort’s commitment to the local community. Soneva Fushi recently paid for a new pre-school on the nearby island of Eydhafushi. Each year it hosts week-long Nature Trips bringing one hundred kids from the capital city of Male to the island to teach them about the wildlife here … and often how to swim. “It’s amazing,” says Anke Hofmeister, the resort’s fulltime marine biologist, “that many of these island kids have never learned to swim, nor know anything about their own backyard.”

In June Soneva Fushi – and its sister resort, Soneva Gili, water bungalows located just a 20-minute boat ride from the country’s lone airport in Male –will start promoting what they’re calling a “win-win” program. Come for 14 days and volunteer four days as a teacher, hospital worker, farming assistant or with the resorts’ waste-to-wealth project and they’ll give you fourteen more nights’ accommodation … free.

Photo: Fiona Stewart

Barren and Carcass Islands, The Falklands

January 19, 2009

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As I’ve figured out during the past ten days, when it comes to islands few can compete with South Georgia for its fantastic wildlife, landscape and sense of mystery. So when Barren Island – one of the Falklands 740 smallish isles – appeared out the fog this morning it both lived up to its name and reminded me we were no longer in magic land.

Flat and not surprisingly devoid of any foliage taller than my boots, Barren Island is nonetheless distinct for its burrowing penguins, a solitary snipe, a beach covered with bleached-out whale bones and something I hadn’t seen for awhile: Beach trash.

Sheets of quasi-buried plastic on Banner Island

That there was a smattering of plastic and detritus washed (tossed?) off commercial fishing boats on the far side of Banner is not the fault of the island, or of the Falklands. Most of what I saw on this beach, as I’ve seen on virtually every coastline I’ve visited during the past decade, comes from boats of all kinds, many of which still treat the ocean like a limitless dump.

A sheep farmer named Mike, who happens by in his Zodiac just as I land ashore, leases Banner Island. I ask about prevailing currents and where the washed-up stuff most likely comes from. “Boats,” is his simple answer. Mainland Argentina is several hundred miles away.

Along with its brother island George, which I can make out in the near distance, Barren are the southernmost working farms in the Falklands. They are successful at sheep and cows and re-growing tussock grasses in part because they are rat-free, a problem impacting many of the near islands. Seals, giant petrels and gentoo and Magellanic penguins share the beaches happily, but the islands are best known for the amazing bird life … everywhere.

We spend the morning walking the length of Banner and then sail to the somewhat unfortunately named Carcass Island (named after a sailing ship, not a cadaver). Just a trio of families has lived on Carcass over the past century and the island itself is well looked after and boasts another thing I haven’t seen for many weeks: A bed and breakfast.

Piles and piles of washed-up trash, Carcass Island, the Falklands

Carcass is hilly, dipped in late day mist, beautiful … but the plastic and trash on the beach is even worse than on Banner; in fact, it may be among the worst example of man’s mistreatment of the ocean I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot, since I’ve spent the past decade studying beaches and coastlines around the globe. During the last ten years we identified a trio of environmental issues impacting everyone who lives on or near a beach: Climate change, over fishing and plastic pollution. Sadly, Carcass Island could become the poster boy for the latter. A few of its beaches are so thick in man’s plastic waste that its rocks and sand and shoreline disappear beneath my feet.