The official opening of a massive plastics factory in Singapore just before the start of crucial negotiations for an historic global treaty on plastic pollution has angered environmental activists in the city-state.
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The nine-storey, S$220 million (US$164 million) facility that produces plastics used in the aerospace, healthcare and automotive industries and owned by Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) had its official launch last Friday, just under a year after the plant started up operations, according to Singapore news publication The Straits Times.
Sabic is a plastics manufacturer owned by Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil and gas company. The plant is expected to boost resin production by 50 per cent above the 8,000 tonnes per year already in production.
The announcement was met with frustration from Singapore Youth for Climate Action (SYCA), an environmental advocacy group, which had in September – along with 144 other civil society groups – called on Singapore’s negotiators at the global plastics treaty to push for a cap on plastic production.
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We are disappointed and shocked that this (plant launch) is taking place only just a few weeks before the Global Plastics Treaty final negotiations.
Singapore Youth for Climate Action
Singapore will be one of 175 countries taking part in the final round of United Nations-led negotiations, or INC-5, to thrash out an agreement to curb plastic pollution at the end of this month in Busan, South Korea. Earlier talks have been marred by disagreement over limits to upstream production amid heavy lobbying from industry.
SYCA said in a social media post that the plant launch was “completely misaligned” with what is needed in a strong plastics treaty, which should include science-based targets to cut plastic production.
The group noted that Sabic has been linked to numerous environmental and safety violations in Europe and the United States while the chief executive of its owner, Aramco, recently said at an event in Singapore that Southeast Asia needs more oil and gas in the clean energy transition.
“Plastic pollution, driven by overproduction, is inextricably tied to the interests of the fossil fuel industry because plastics are primarily made from petrochemicals derived from oil and natural gas,” SYCA said in its post.
In an open letter in September, the nonprofit had also called for a plastic production reduction target of 40 per cent by 2040, reductions on persistent, bioaccumulative, mobile and toxic (PBMT) plastics, and a tax on producers.
Singapore’s ministry of sustainability and environment said in response that it had been considering all feedback from stakeholders “alongside our national context and circumstances” as it deliberates on its national position for INC-5.
Eco-Business has approached the ministry for a response to SYCA’s concerns over the new facility.
Some of the world’s largest biggest petrochemicals producers have a strong presence in Singapore, which owes much of its prosperity to the oil and gas industry. Industry lobbying has been blamed on the long delay to the introduction of a beverage container return scheme to address Singapore’s chronically low recycling rate for plastics.
