press release
NAIROBI, August 30, 2020 – The American Chemistry Council has urged the U.S. government to use the U.S.-Kenya trade agreement to expand the plastics industry footprint across Africa amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Documents obtained by Greenpeace’s investigative reporting platform Unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act separately show that the same lobby group, whose members include Shell, Exxon and Total, also lobbied against changes to the international Basel Convention that would place new limits on plastic waste entering low- and middle-income countries.
“Africa is on the front lines of the plastic war, with 34 out of 54 countries introducing some kind of regulation to phase out single-use plastics,” said Greenpeace Africa Senior Political Advisor Fredrik Nizhev. “The Kenyan government should not bow to pressure from fossil fuel giants and roll back progress on its plastic-free ambitions, as that would derail progress across the continent.”
“Kenya could in the future serve as a hub for supplying U.S.-made chemicals and plastics to other markets in Africa through this trade agreement,” the ACC said in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative officials. The ACC also wants to lift restrictions on trade in plastic waste, which experts believe would circumvent the new Basel Convention rules.
In a separate letter to the chairman of the US International Trade Commission, the ACC said the trade deal would be an “important model” for other African countries. “This foothold will allow the United States to play an influential role in shaping trade policy across Africa,” the letter said, adding that it will allow the United States to “build a platform for U.S. chemical manufacturers to expand exports and tap into new growth markets across sub-Saharan Africa.”
“It is embarrassing, but not surprising, that struggling fossil fuel giants are lobbying for more polluting plastics to be pumped into the African continent in order to stay profitable,” said Kate Melges, senior plastics campaigner at Greenpeace USA. “These companies want to continue dumping single-use plastics into communities around the world, despite the known environmental and public health impacts. Making public statements about ending plastic pollution while quietly lobbying to allow Africa to be used as a plastic dumping ground is next level hypocrisy and greenwashing.”
The ACC’s efforts will undermine the progress Kenya and other African countries have made in tackling plastic pollution. Kenya passed one of the strictest laws on the manufacture, sale and use of plastic bags in 2017, and recently expanded that law to ban the use of plastic in protected areas.
“Kenya has made great strides in reducing plastic pollution, with the ban on the use and manufacture of single-use plastic carrier bags and more recently the ban on plastics in protected areas. This trade deal has the potential to turn Kenya into a garbage dump and reduce the gains this country has achieved. We are petitioning the Ministry of Trade to say no to this deal,” Njiev continued.
Oil companies such as Shell, Exxon and Total, along with consumer goods companies such as PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble, are members of the industry’s End Plastic Waste Alliance, which has pledged to spend $1 billion on waste management efforts to prevent plastic pollution in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. Despite these public commitments, the ACC, which represents some of these companies, argued in a document that such infrastructure requires continued exports of plastics, as a circular economy requires sufficient raw materials. ACC told Unearthed that it is concerned about how the restrictions could hinder exports from low- and middle-income countries to countries with more infrastructure capacity.
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