User:Kcchiefs202/Sandbox 2

Firestone Tire and Rubber Company

Environmetal Record

Firestone, a multinational rubber manufacturing giant known for its automobile tires, has come under fire from human rights and environmental groups for its alleged use of child labor and slave-like working conditions at a plantation in Liberia. Recently, the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF), a Washington, D.C. based group, filed a lawsuit charging that thousands of workers toil in virtual slavery at Bridgestone's Firestone rubber plantation in Liberia. Most plantation workers are at the mercy of Firestone for just about everything from food, health care to education. The workers risk expulsion and starvation if they raise even minor complaints, and the company makes willful use of this situation to exploit these workers since 1926. According to the complaint filed in the United States District Court in Venice, California, Firestone, which has operated in the West African country since the 1920s, largely depends on poor and illiterate workers to harvest tons of raw latex from rubber trees exposing them to hazardous pesticides and fertilizers.Verdier and others say thousands of workers at the plantation cannot meet daily harvesting quota without unpaid aid, requiring them to put their own children to work or face starvation. They work for $3.19 a day and work close to 20 hours every day. The 240 square-mile plantation has an official workforce of 6,000, out of which at least 4,000 are reportedly facing extremely inhumane conditions.

Environmetal Record

The B.F. Goodrich site is a 2-acre industrial landfill, located about 2 miles northeast of Calvert City, Kentucky and lies on the southern bank of the Tennessee River. The B.F. Goodrich Company disposed of wastes on the site from the years 1969 to 1972 and used a former creek channel for landfilling. Workers disposed of about 54,000 tons of construction waste and plant trash. Buried 370 cubic yards of salt-brine sludge, and burned over 2 million gallons of liquid chlorinated organics in several burn pits at the site. From 1973 to 1980, the only waste disposed of at the site was excavation dirt. In 1980, an inspection by the Kentucky Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection disclosed a leaking problem along the river side of the landfill. The landfill was closed under a State approved closure plan in 1980. Groundwater, soil, and sediments are contaminated with volatile organic compounds including benzene and toluene from the former waste disposal activities.

Environmetal Record

Yamaha Corporation will have to pay over 2 million dollars to the state of California in order to settle a 2005 lawsuit over the importation of motorcycles that failed to meet California emissions standards. Yamaha will also have to begin a vehicle purchasing program to buy back, remove, or destroy any motorcycles that are not certified for use in California. California motorcyclists can find out if their bike is illegal by looking at the emissions label. If it does not state California, the bike has only met federal emissions standards. Other California motorcycle dealers had already settled this case with the Air Resources Board, but Yamaha held out until the end. They concluded that Yamaha had imported over 400 illegal motorcycles, registered them to Yamaha in California, obtained state license plates, and sold the vehicles to California residents. In addition to paying 1.2 million dollars to the Board, the company will also be forced to pay $500,000 to fund a project to test the impact of ethanol fuel blends on emissions from off-road gasoline engines, and $300,000 to the Office of the Attorney General for attorneys' fees.

Environmetal Record

Gazprom, Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi signed an agreement which will see Gazprom, take over half plus one share of Shell’s 55% stake of Sakhalin Energy Investment Company. It was reported that Shell would keep a blocking stake of at least a quarter in Sakhalin-2, with Russia’s Gazprom controlling the majority after a predicted takeover of 50% of the shares of both Mitsui and Mitsubishi. They will continue to operate the Sakhalin-2 project; future decisions will be made by a board representing all shareholders. Whoever ends up running this project must do all they can to protect the last remaining Western Pacific gray whales.They have been campaigning on the Sakhalin issue for more than five years because of concerns about the fate of the very endangered whales. Construction of an off-shore pipeline near to the feeding ground was completed and monitoring of the whales using photo-identification techniques revealed a number of the whales have become skinny since construction work began, creating fears that their feeding habits are being disrupted. They will continue to monitor the Western Pacific gray whale population in its only feeding ground off the North-Eastern coast of Sakhalin, as well as the industrial activity in this region. We will further insist that all decisions taken by SEIC, including any new shareholders, will be made with respect to the environment, the whales and the Russian legislation,” said IFAW Russia director Maria Vorontsova, responding to latest reports on the Gazprom-Shell deal.Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources announced that it was going to revoke its environmental certification of the second phase of Sakhalin 2, a $20 billion off-shore oil exploration project, citing numerous infractions of environmental requirements. Since the activity of SEIC was put under strict control of the Russian environmental watchdog, Rosprirodnadzor, which IFAW and other world renowned NGOs have been insisting on for the last six years. Fuel industry rumours have suggested the move to revoke environmental certification was financially motivated. Examples of damage shown to international media and representatives of IFAW and other NGOs in September included damage to the sea bed near a liquefied natural gas plant at Aniva Bay, as well as destruction of forests, river crossings and salmon spawning grounds resulting from the pipe lines used for oil and gas.

Envrionmental Record

In 2005, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Maryland filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania against Allegheny Energy Inc. The suit claims that Allegheny made major upgrades at its Armstrong, Hatfield's Ferry and Mitchell plants that dramically increased emissions, without constructing new pollution controls required by the Clean Air Act. The plants have continued to emit thousands of tons more pollution each year, including sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, which blow into New Jersey. This causes smog, acid rain, and different respiratory disease. "New Jersey continues to pursue litigation to protect our citizens' health and meet clean air quality standards," Gov. Jon S. Corzine said. "This decision proves that New Jersey can and will pursue action to enforce the Clean Air Act's protections even when the federal government abdicates its own responsibility to do so." The three plants at issue in this litigation emit in total hundreds of thousands of tons of pollutants a year. The three plants put out more nitrogen oxide emissions than all the power plants in New Jersey combined and more than three times the total amount of sulfur dioxide emissions emitted by all New Jersey power plants. The Hatfield's Ferry plant is the fifth largest single source of sulfur dioxide emissions in the country. The suit also claims violations of Pennsylvania's air pollution laws and regulations. New Jersey is seeking injunctive relief to require Allegheny to reduce its harmful emissions by installing up to date pollution controls at each of the three plants. The states also asked the court to apply penalties and order Allegheny to take additional appropriate actions to make up for the harm done to public health and the environment by its violations of federal and state law.

Environmental Record

Great Lakes is the largest producer of methyl bromide in the U.S. Great Lakes creates more than 40 million pounds annually in their Magnolia, Arkansas plants. Its bromine business has made the company the number one polluter in Arkansas based on the 1994 Toxic Release Inventory data. The company was also fined $190,000 for water pollution in Arkansas in 1994. Great Lakes was fined $1.3 million for environmental violations in 1991 in Florida alone. Great Lakes Chemical's involvement in the bromine business had its roots in leaded gasoline. When tetraethyl lead was invented as a gasoline additive back in the 1920s, it turned out that it left a corrosive byproduct in the engine. The solution that scientists found was to add a chemical called ethylene dibromide to the mix. As leaded gasoline began to be phased out and then banned in many countries, Great Lakes developed international markets for its deadly product. Indeed, today, the only remaining private sector corporation producing and marketing is a Great Lakes' company, Associated Octel. In 1995, TEL accounted for nearly half of all Great Lakes' profits. The globalization of leaded gasoline has made TEL responsible for nearly 90 percent of airborne lead pollution in Third World cities today. When burned, the EDB in leaded gasoline produces methyl bromide. The World Meterological Organization has determined that the continuing exhaust from automobiles using leaded gasoline is one of the three potentially major sources of atmospheric methyl bromide. In other words, in addition to poisoining people, Great Lakes' leaded gasoline destroys the ozone.

Environmental Record

A former RCA facility in Taiwan's northern county of Taoyuan. More than 1,000 former employees of that facility are suffering from cancer and more than 200 have died. Most believe the company's plants polluted groundwater with toxic chemicals which lead to the outbreak of illness. Richard Knoph, a spokesman for RCA's current owners, Thomson Multimedia of France, denied responsibility for the illnesses, saying a study conducted by the Taiwan government showed no correlation between the illnesses and the company's facilities. He also said a 1999 lawsuit alleging similar connections. After RCA operated the plants for more than two decades, its facilities in northern Taiwan were shut down in 1991 and the area was declared a toxic site by the Taiwanese Environmental Protection Agency. General Electric, which bought RCA in 1986, sold it to Thomson one year later, in 1987. Both GE and Thomson spent millions of dollars for the cleanup of the site in the mid-1990s, removing 10,000 cubic yards of soil and installing municipal water treatment facilities for neighboring communities.