Operation Clean Sweep faces calls to transform

The plastics industry's longtime voluntary program to fight pellet leakage from its factories, known as Operation Clean Sweep, is facing new pressure from governments and environmental groups.

Amid heightened concern about plastic waste in the environment, they argue that OCS needs to modernize by giving the public much more data about resin spills and move toward becoming mandatory, rather than voluntary, or find other ways to get more companies to participate.

Industry groups say they are looking at some changes. The American Chemistry Council, for example, said there are "early stage" talks about bringing OCS under the wing of the chemical industry's more demanding Responsible Care program.

The latest push for tougher action on pellet pollution came Jan. 10, with the green investor group As You Sow announcing it had filed shareholder resolutions against Chevron, DowDuPont, ​ ExxonMobil and Phillips 66 asking for annual reports on resin spills and efforts to prevent them.

There are other, more high-profile calls for action: Both the European Union's plastics strategy and the G7 bloc's plastics charter in 2018 highlighted resin pellet pollution from factories as an important problem to tackle. Both reports pushed a so-called "whole supply chain" approach to fighting pellet pollution.

In practice, that approach can mean outside certification and some public reporting that OCS currently lacks.

Some environmental groups who have studied OCS say that while the program is good at providing best practices, keeping it voluntary has meant that only "front-running companies" sign up, which limits the impact because many companies, particularly smaller ones, can avoid participating.

"The voluntary nature of the scheme, lack of external auditing and reporting from companies signed up means it's impossible to know if the scheme is truly effective," said Madeline Berg, a marine plastics project manager with Fidra, an environmental charity based in North Berwick, Scotland. "We're certain that a legislative push will be needed to level the playing field and make sure all companies follow suit."

OCS started in 1991 as a voluntary initiative of the U.S. industry to establish best practices around reducing pellet loss from factories into the environment. It's since spread worldwide. According to its website, the program's goal is zero pellet loss.

ACC, one of two groups that administers OCS in the United States, said in an email that industry is looking at ways to beef up OCS by making it part of Responsible Care, which requires companies to undergo third-party audits and report environmental, health and other data. That information is then posted on an ACC website.

"Discussions are underway to better integrate Operation Clean Sweep within Responsible Care," ACC said, although it cautioned that the discussions are "early stages" and that it's "too soon to predict what this will look like."

"Our members are fully committed to transparency and continuous improvement in all areas of performance, including preventing pellet loss," ACC said.

Oakland, Calif.-based As You Sow, however, argued that growing worry about plastic waste means that the industry needs to move much more quickly to be transparent about reporting pellet loss so the public can gauge if OCS is effective.

"We have a situation of 27 years of a supposed remediating initiative with absolutely no public disclosure, not one piece of public data released," Conrad MacKerron, As You Sow's senior vice president, said. "That's no longer tolerable given rising public concern about the volume of ocean plastics.

"A request for transparency on what best practices are being pursued, what spills have occurred, and how cleanups were managed seems eminently reasonable," MacKerron said.

Environmental regulators in California and Texas have penalized plastic companies for pellet leakage from their factories.

In the most recent case, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Jan. 16 fined resin producer Formosa Plastic Corp. USA $121,000 for excessive discharges of resin pellets from its Point Comfort plant into surrounding waterways.

The U.S. industry recently introduced an enhanced version of the program, called OCS Blue, and ACC said all of its members have committed to adopting OCS Blue by 2022 and "are exploring options for increasing rigor and transparency within the program."

The other group that administers OCS in the United States, the Plastics Industry Association, said that the OCS Blue program includes confidentiality provisions because some of the information collected through OCS Blue is proprietary to the applicant company.

In Europe, there's also been a push by environmental groups to make OCS stricter.

Fidra, for example, issued a 2017 report contending that "only a small number of companies have signed up" for OCS. It recommended that governments either take regulatory measures or have industry develop so-called "enhanced voluntary measures."

Berg said Fidra is seeing more interest from companies but still believes both legislation and a much deeper involvement throughout the plastics supply chain will be needed to achieve the stated goal of zero pellet loss.

"OCS is a useful toolkit, and we're pleased that company engagement with the scheme has increased, but it's not enough on its own to ensure zero pellet loss from such a vast industry and complex supply chain," Berg said.

As well, Cambridge, England-based environmental group Fauna & Flora International said it's been having constructive dialogue with industry groups around OCS.

It also favors the supply chain approach advocated by the European Union's plastics strategy, including an EU-wide certification, and said it's received general support from industry groups for that idea.

"The European and U.K. plastic industry trade bodies have told us that they do support a supply chain approach to pellet pollution," said Dilyana Mihaylova, FFI's marine plastics project manager. "We want to see all companies across the whole plastic supply chain demonstrate effective implementation of OCS through a transparent third-party assessment process."

The trade group PlasticsEurope did not respond to a request for comment, but the group issued a report on OCS in 2017 that detailed industry efforts and said pellet loss was a major concern.

It said that when it wrote the report, about 50 percent of its members, who are large resin manufacturing firms, participate in OCS but that it hoped to raise that to 100 percent by the end of 2017.

The report gave examples of actions companies had taken to reduce pellet loss and noted that PlasticsEurope was developing a reporting scheme for comparable information from all OCS signatories.

The trade group said that a reduction of pellet losses by 75 percent "can be observed" over the last several decades but said more effort is needed.

It also said it has met with FFI and Fidra to discuss pellet loss concerns, and after those discussions, OCS was included on Fidra's Great Nurdle Hunt website aimed at reducing pellet pollution.

PlasticsEurope's report also noted that it participated in a 2015 conference on microplastics put on the OSPAR Commission, a collection of 15 governments concerned about the northeast Atlantic Ocean, and made some changes to OCS based on feedback there. The group said it added more transparency and target setting to OCS.