Archived press release

polluters exposed on internet

27 October 1995

Friends of the Earth exposed the nation's top polluters today (19/10/95) when it launched an electronic A-Z of the dirtiest factories in England and Wales [1]. Anyone with a connection to the Internet can now find out official Government figures about who (and what) is contaminating their local environment and use electronic maps to locate the polluters.

The unveiling of the Government's important but previously obscure Chemical Release Inventory' (CRI), marks the start of a new Right to Know' campaign which aims to force Government and industry to give the public greater access to environmental information.

Tony Juniper, Deputy Campaigns Director, said:

"This system will let the public know some of the facts about who's polluting their environment. But it's up to all of us to make Government and industry come clean and tell the whole truth about environmental destruction."

The Internet CRI, launched at 11.00 am today at Cyberia, 39 Whitfield Street, London, W1 [see attached map], shows how vital information about the environment can be provided easily and at low cost. Friends of the Earth is now challenging the Government to supply more information on companies' polluting emissions [2].

Despite existing legislation promoting access to environmental information, a great deal of vital material remains secret. For example, Friends of the Earth has recently been denied access to documents which supposedly provide the economic justification for building the highly controversial Newbury Bypass. The privatised utilities have been equally unhelpful. Water companies have refused to release information on illegal discharges of industrial waste to sewers and British Gas continues to withhold data on the location and levels of contamination of hundreds of old gas works sites.

Tony Juniper, Deputy Campaigns Director at Friends of the Earth, said:

"Obstructive bureaucrats can throw up a barrage of perfectly legal excuses or excessive charges that foil even the most determined environmental watchdogs. We need simple legislation to open official agencies to public scrutiny and more information from industry so that people can find out who is polluting their air, water and land".

The new Right to Know campaign draws on years of experience in Friends of the Earth of winkling information out of uncooperative official bodies and shy companies. The long-term aim is to achieve a broad-based Freedom of Information Act. More immediate priorities include the establishment of an official but independent body to judge disputes arising from the interpretation of existing law [3], gaining official commitment to prevent the further privatisation' of information arising from the passage of state-owned concerns into the private sector [4] and persuading the Government to vastly improve the range, quality and accessibility of the CRI data.

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS:

A full press pack is available from Adam Garfunkel

[1] The "Chemical Release Inventory" is a database from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution (HMIP). It shows annual emissions to air, land and water of substances from major industrial processes regulated by HMIP in England and Wales (up to the year 1994). In the US, public scrutiny of this sort of data from individual industrial sites has proved a powerful incentive for pollution reduction and waste minimisation programmes, and the concept of inventories for such aims is included in Agenda 21 (UNCED 1992). However, the existence of the data in public registers is not widely known and HMIP's summary report last year failed to name a single company. Friends of the Earth has added more precise geographical information in order to map each individual site and is aimed at stimulating much further analysis.

Bill Clinton, President of the United States, spoke of the effectiveness of the US release inventory in August 1995: "... since the Community Right to Know Act has been on the books reported reductions in toxic emissions are about 43 per cent for the whole country. Now that's a law worth passing. No new bureaucracy; just power to the people through basic knowledge. This has kept millions of pounds of chemicals out of our lives. It's helped people to stay healthy and live longer... it's also helped to spur innovation to help businesses work smarter and cleaner and become more profitable, not less profitable".

[2] Friends of the Earth has called for a series of improvements to make the CRI database more comprehensive, accurate and effective at promoting pollution reduction. Criticisms include: - not all emissions are shown and, since there is no standard list of substances for reporting, the criteria are unclear; - industrial sectors are being phased in until 1997, therefore the CRI is still incomplete even by its own standards; - some substances are grouped together even though of different environmental impact; - the environmental media (air, water, land) need to be better distinguished eg discharges to sewer or to recycling could be identified; - smaller industries are not included; - the database has no precise geographical location of sites and checking of data by HMIP is inadequate. [A full critique is available in the press pack.]

[3] An environmental information tribunal would give a relatively cheap and easy appeals procedure for members of the public who felt they had been unreasonably denied access to information either by outright refusals to supply or by overcharging. The tribunal would be a judicial process with powers to overturn administrative decisions. Legal representation and hence costs would be reduced to a minimum in a similar way to the existing small claims procedures.

[4] British Gas owns hundreds of heavily contaminated sites which are widely spread over England and Wales (even the Department of the Environment is built on an old gas works site). In spite of widespread public concern about risks to health, property and the environment from on and off site migration of contaminants, British Gas has consistently refused to release information they hold about pollution levels and the location of their sites. Independent monitoring by Friends of the Earth has demonstrated that contamination from gas works can spread into neighbouring properties.

If you're a journalist looking for press information please contact the Friends of the Earth media team on 020 7566 1649.

Published by Friends of the Earth Trust