Europe still has a plastics problem — and it's coming from Texas

Europe has a plastics problem. Millions of tiny plastic pellets routinely wash up along Europe’s coastline and waterways, becoming long-lasting pollutants. Earlier this year, authorities in northern Spain declared an environmental emergency when millions of these pellets washed up on shore after a huge spill. Plastics pellets are melted down and turned into packaging or bottles, items which also often end up in Europe’s waterways after just a single use, clogging rivers, damaging the environment and endangering marine life.

To try and address this problem the EU has recently agreed new rules to cut packaging waste and ban some single-use plastics, whilst additional rules to address plastic pellet pollution loom on the horizon.

However, Europe’s plastics problem extends further than the significant problem of plastics pollution. Harms to the environment, climate and human health occur throughout the plastics lifecycle, starting from the extraction of fossil fuels, which are processed into petrochemicals and then plastics pellets.

Amnesty International recently published new research showing how some petrochemical products linked to human rights abuses and environmental racism, are being exported into Europe’s plastic supply chain from plants concentrated around the Houston Ship Channel in Texas.

The fossil fuel refineries and petrochemical plants along the channel, including many owned by European companies, routinely expose local communities to harmful pollution, causing devastating health harms. LyondellBasell, Shell and ExxonMobil are among the many polluters in the area. These companies produce and send petrochemicals and plastics resins to European destinations, including Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

Residents along the channel suffer from a range of illnesses linked to their exposure to toxins, including high cancer rates, asthma, heart disease, infertility, and birth defects. One resident described the reality for fenceline communities such as his: “A lot of people have cancer, breathing difficulties. Maybe it’s just life but you live where you live, it makes you wonder … There’s no way living right next to [industry] is good.”

Houston, we have a problem

The people most exposed to this harmful pollution are disproportionately low-income and racialised, a form of discrimination that amounts to environmental racism. The industry is rarely held to account by the oil-and-gas friendly state of Texas, which routinely renews operating permits for repeat offenders and rubber stamps extension plans, giving the greenlight to these companies to continue polluting.

This has created an industrial corridor so heavily contaminated that Amnesty International has designated the Houston Ship Channel a “sacrifice zone”, in which the health and environment of local communities are sacrificed for the benefit of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry. Remarking on the lack of action by the authorities to address this environmental injustice, one resident said: “They don’t care, we’re minorities… That’s why so many lives have been lost over the years.”

In 2022, UN member states voted unanimously to recognise that everyone has a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. These same member states will convene in Canada this week to participate in the fourth of five planned rounds of negotiations to develop an ambitious global plastics treaty aimed at curbing pollution.

While the intention was to create a legally-binding instrument that addresses the “full life cycle” of plastic, some countries – and fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists – are pushing to limit the scope to plastic waste, ignoring the type of rampant environmental, climate, and human rights harms documented in our report.

Virtually all plastics are made from fossil fuels which is why the industry has made increasing plastics production it’s ‘Plan B’ to offset anticipated losses from the energy transition. As a result, plastics production is set to double by 2050.

 It is critical that the treaty – expected to be finalised at the end of this year – covers the entire plastics lifecycle to address the adverse impacts of the world’s plastic pollution crisis on human rights, the environmental and climate.

Whether proposals to restrict the production of plastics will remain in the treaty text following the latest round of talks is unclear. However, proposals that limit the treaty’s focus to the disposal of plastics will fail to address the root cause of the problem – more plastics production means more plastic waste. They also ignore the significant human rights and environmental harms posed by plastics recycling. 

At the EU level, new corporate accountability legislation, known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, is expected to be approved this month. The law will require large businesses based or trading in the EU, to assess and address human rights and environmental risks in their operations and value chains around the world. This will impact EU petrochemical companies operating along the Houston Ship Channel, such as Netherlands-based LyondellBasell, who will be required to assess the impacts of their operations, including their emissions, and provide remedy to those suffering harms.

Combined with a tough new UN plastics treaty, the new EU directive could help turn the tide against plastics in Europe – which can’t come soon enough for the continent’s beaches, bottle-blighted rivers, and all those communities suffering at the hands of the plastics and fossil fuel industries.