Jessica Georges loves the beaches of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where she lives.
But a few years ago, she realized even the most pristine parts of town weren’t immune to plastic pollution. “You can’t walk three yards on most beach days and not run into some sort of plastic,” she told EHN. Increasingly bothered by what she saw, she created a low-waste business — Green Road Refill — to sell low-cost and low-waste goods to her community.
Now, she and other low-waste businesses are strengthening their efforts to reduce plastic pollution via the National Business Coalition for the Oceans, a nationwide organization of businesses supported by nonprofit Oceana. The coalition focuses on advancing federal, state and local policies to improve ocean health, in part by curbing single-use plastics. Businesses involved in the coalition work for plastics policy change by sending letters, signing petitions, testifying at hearings and educating customers.
“We’re really happy to be part of a coalition where others are bringing their perspectives and their solutions, and we can all join forces and create the systems change that’s necessary,” Lauren Sweeney, a coalition member and co-founder of reusable packaging company Deliver Zero, told EHN.
Plastic policy progress
Oceana’s business coalition emerged in 2021, after a partnership between Oceana, government officials and regional businesses helped ban oil and gas drilling along the Atlantic and eastern Gulf coasts. It became clear businesses voicing their concerns had the power to convince lawmakers, said Claudia Davis, the coordinator of the coalition.
The coalition provides tools to business owners to help them learn about policy issues related to the oceans and gives them accessible ways to participate in policy efforts. Davis organizes members to sign petitions, author opinion pieces to publish in news outlets, testify at hearings and meet with lawmakers about relevant legislation. Any business interested in ocean health can join. Now, 250 business owners, from diving shops to restaurants to refilleries (shops where customers can refill reusable packaging with home and personal care products), are involved.
“We really want to encourage collective action from the business community, because that's what's going to deliver policy victories that make a change for the most people,” Davis told EHN.
At the federal level, the coalition is working to pass the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which would set nationwide plastics reduction targets, ban certain single-use plastic products and create a nationwide beverage container refund program.
The coalition is working to expand the number of states and local governments with similar plastic legislation.
In 2022, the coalition worked with multiple businesses in New York City to pass the “skip the stuff” law, which prohibits New York City restaurants from providing single-use plastics in takeout orders unless the customer asks. While the law will help reduce plastic pollution, it will also help restaurants save money, Davis said.
Skip the Stuff rally in NYC.
Credit: Raine Manley/NRDC
New York City's “skip the stuff” law prohibits New York City restaurants from providing single-use plastics in takeout orders unless the customer asks.
Credit: Raine Manley/NRDC
Sweeney and Larasati Vitoux, another coalition member who runs a New York City refillery called the Maison Jar, testified for the bill at a hearing in front of New York City’s Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection.
“I think it really made a difference to have members of the community who were saying “This is important to me not just as an individual, not just because I want to see less trash in my community, but [because] it's gonna save me and all of us money in the long run,”’ Davis said.
A business perspective
Low-waste businesses can provide a crucial perspective to lawmakers concerned about how policy changes will impact the economy. “Other businesses will come forward and say these bills are terrible for business,” Sweeney said. “Actually, you can run a business without polluting the planet and the oceans. The goal of these organizations is to counter the narrative that plastic reduction solutions are inherently anti-business.”
Bringing business voices to environmental advocacy work is critical, said Jennifer Congdon, deputy director for Beyond Plastics, an environmental nonprofit not involved in Oceana’s coalition. Policymakers can get a lot of reassurance from hearing that environmental policies pushed by advocates “are going to shift the economy, but they’re not going to harm the economy,” she told EHN. “There’s a path forward for economic growth.”
"You can run a business without polluting the planet and the oceans. The goal of these organizations is to counter the narrative that plastic reduction solutions are inherently anti-business.” - Lauren Sweeney, Deliver Zero
At Green Road Refill, Georges sells more than 40 plant-based products such as dish soaps, shampoos and detergents. Running a refill shop is difficult work with slim margins, said Georges and Katie Rodgers-Hubbard, who runs a similar refillery in Savannah, Georgia, called Lite Foot Company.
Bills that restrict single-use plastics give businesses like theirs a leg up by shifting the external costs of plastic like its environmental and public health harms — back to the businesses. “That makes plastic less competitive against other materials and other methods of delivering goods to people,” said Congdon.
Preventing plastic pollution
Lite Foot Company in Savannah, Georgia.
Credit: Katie Rodgers-Hubbard/Lite Foot Company
While they work toward policy action, the businesses themselves are helping to fight pollution, too. In 2023, Rodgers-Hubbard decided that running a low-waste business and joining other nonprofit efforts wasn’t enough. She started a new, nonprofit branch of her business: Lite Foot Environmental Foundation.
The foundation is creating a grade-school curriculum to educate students about plastic pollution and reuse. They also host clothing and book swaps and clothing repair days to encourage the Savannah community to extend the life of belongings. “We’re hoping to push the narrative,” Rodgers-Hubbard said. “Let’s fix things, let’s buy things of quality.”
And at Green Road Refill, Georges doesn’t only sell closed-loop products —her suppliers are closed-loop, too. She buys many of her products in 30- to 55-gallon containers from a company called Rustic Strength, which she then sends back to the company once the containers are empty. When considering what to put on her shelves, she prioritizes products with biodegradable and non-toxic ingredients.
Georges also focuses on educating customers and gives talks to libraries and elementary schools about plastic pollution. She asks everyone who gets a refill at her shop to contribute to an art installation made of non-recyclable bottle caps—a great way to start conversations about reducing one’s plastic footprint, she said. She passes information and petitions from Oceana on to customers in her monthly newsletters.
“When I first started, I had to really do a lot of work explaining what plastic was and why it's important to reduce your own plastic footprint,” she said. But now, the people who visit her shop are more familiar with refilleries and living a low-waste lifestyle.
“Businesses that exist almost for the sole purpose of reducing single use plastic are growing,” said Sweeney. “This is an exciting sector and the U.S. could develop more leadership in this sector by actually passing policy more quickly.”
“In their own way, they’re becoming experts, not just of their experiences but also of the data collection process.”
Jose Ramon Becerra Vera joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss arming residents in his native Inland Empire region of California with air pollution data to advocate for their health and community.
Becerra Vera, a current Agents of Change fellow and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University, also talks about the importance of qualitative data and how to center communities from the outset of your research.
The Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast is a biweekly podcast featuring the stories and big ideas from past and present fellows, as well as others in the field. You can see all of the past episodes here.
Listen below to our discussion with Becerra Vera and subscribe to the podcast at iTunes or Spotify.
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
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With predictions of a highly active hurricane season, the inadequacies in current disaster response systems could lead to severe consequences for vulnerable communities, emphasizing an increasing need for better preparedness amid escalating climate-related risks. Read more: Robbie Parks on why hurricanes are getting deadlier.
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