Multinationals' polluting acts under inspection
Updated: 2007-12-10 13:33
For multinational companies (MNCs) seeking business opportunities in China, performance in environmental protection will account for a large measure of future success in the local market.
Environmental watchdogs, governmental or non-governmental, are keeping a close eye on MNCs. Their monitoring is becoming even more intense as China begins the transition from its development mode - from heavily polluting and energy wasting - to greener and more sustainable.
China plans to cut its major pollution emissions, including sulfur dioxide and chemical oxygen demand, by 10 percent from 2006 to 2010. In addition, energy consumption per unit of GDP is expected to be reduced by 20 percent in the same period.
In the five-year battle key industries and plants that have poor records for consuming energy and releasing pollution will be the first required by the Chinese government to make contributions to the green drive.
Some of them are world-famous MNCs that implement high environmental standards in their mother countries, yet have another set of standards in China.
Ma Jun, director of Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a non-governmental agency, has a blacklist of MNC water polluters in China.
He collated information released by environmental watchdogs over the past four years and compiled a list of water polluters based on government data since 2004. He published it on www.ipe.org.cn.
Chinese joint ventures with global corporations, including Pepsi Cola, Samsung, 3M, GM and Nissin, are among the 100 multinational companies on the 2007 list of water polluters.
Other foreign brands on the list are well known to Chinese consumers. They include Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Kao.
The data also discloses pollution caused by global chemical giants DuPont, Degussa and Ciba.
Ma's 2007 blacklist shows that some MNCs have not taken the lead in environmental protection, but instead became severe and chronic polluters.
For example, Tianshui Benma Brewery Co Ltd in Gansu Province, in which Danish beer giant Carlsberg has an interest, discharged untreated wastewater into rivers for two years, defying repeated government orders asking it to stop.
Four branches of Pepsi Cola were found to have violated environmental rules in the cities of Changchun, Nanjing, Guangzhou and Fuzhou.
Ma warns multinational companies to not lower their environmental standards when coming to China.
"The parent companies in their home countries are models for environmental protection. But some of them seem to have slackened their efforts here," he told China Business Weekly earlier.
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