Greenpeace held a press conference in Beijing to accuse German chemical giant BASF of using double standards in environmental information disclosure in China.
According to a report from Sina.com, Greenpeace says BASF has voluntarily and directly made their detailed emission information on its official websites in Germany, the U.S. and Canada, but in China, all the 15 production-oriented enterprises, whether wholly owned or joint venture, have never done so.
"This is extremely unreasonable, and is fully self-contradictory to BASF's 'same standard' it has claimed," said Liu Lican, a manager of Greenpeace China. He demanded BASF immediately stop the unequal disclosure arrangement and fully disclose their emissions and other environmental information. He also urged the Chinese government to improve relevant laws.
In April 2008, Greenpeace released its "Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure Report", pointing out that 13 top multinational corporations including ExxonMobil, Shell, GM Motors, Toyota, Total, Ford, Nissan, Hitachi, Nestle, BMW, Toshiba and BASF were using double standards in emissions information disclosure in China. However, Sina.com also reports that BASF claimed that it has released environmental information regularly in its global reports, and all the statistics has been collected by the same standard worldwide and audited by a third party.
Yet according to further investigation carried out by Greenpeace, BASF Auxiliary Chemicals Co., Ltd. refused to offer key information such as position of outfalls for "commercial confidentiality". Residents around BACC are worrying about their living environment and more important, their health, Greenpeace reportedly said.
