Proponents continue to raise concerns about corporate environmental impacts outside the direct climate and energy umbrella, although climate change permeates all of them to some extent. The greatest number (nine proposals) relate to waste, with a new set of proposals in 2019 about plastics, and several reprise concerns about recycling and food waste. Two are on water, down from five last year, and one about a nuclear plant closure has been omitted although another is pending. (Five proposals about antibiotics and pesticides appear under Industrial Agriculture, p. 32.)
Waste
Plastics: New in 2019 is a resolution from As You Sow about “nurdles.” It asks Chevron, DowDupont, ExxonMobil and Phillips 66 to produce annual report “on plastic pollution,” saying the report “should disclose trends in the amount of pellets, powder or granules released to the environment by the company annually, and concisely assess the effectiveness of the company’s policies and actions to reduce the volume of the company’s plastic materials contaminating the environment.”
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A reformulated proposal about water at Pilgrim’s Pride asks it to report by December “on how the company is responding to increasing regulatory, public and competitive pressure to significantly reduce water pollution from the company’s owned facilities; facilities under contract; and suppliers.” Proposals with the same thrust earned 6.6 percent in 2018 and 14.7 percent in 2017. The proposal makes clear its concern is about water pollution from the company’s chicken production plants; it lists a number of fines levied against the company for recent violations.
Read moreNuclear Power
Two resolutions have been filed but only one is now pending. One to DTE Energy repeated a proposal from last year that earned 5.8 percent, asking for an independent analysis about costs for closing the company’s Fermi 2 nuclear plant. But it was filed too late and has been omitted.
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