Profits Before People: 7 of the World’s Most Irresponsible Companies

Money isn’t everything – or is it? To most corporations, making a profit is goal number one – but

some of those companies take it way too far, sacrificing the health of the planet and its inhabitants

for a bigger bank balance. Far too many corporations turn a blind eye to the consequences of their

destructive, exploitative practices. The worst of them are committing atrocities that go beyond the

realm of objectionable into criminal, dumping toxic chemicals without regard to public health and

employing child labor.

What makes these seven companies extra evil is the fact that they’ve committed crimes that are

BOTH environmentally and socially irresponsible.

Nestle

Image via Blood in Your Coffee

More than 40% of the world’s chocolate comes from Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) in Africa, where

tens of thousands of children are estimated to be working in dangerous conditions on cocoa farms.

Nestle uses cocoa harvested by slave labor, and only when Senator Thomas Harkin (D-Iowa) led an

investigation and introduced legislation that would require chocolate sold in the US to be labeled

“slave-free” did the company act. Nestle promised that by July 2005 they would find a way to certify

chocolate as not having been produced by any underage, indentured, trafficked or coerced labor, but

since then, they have achieved very little.

Nestle’s bottled water business is also a major cause for concern. Nestle controls one-third of the

US market and sells 70 different brand names of bottled water including Arrowhead, Deer Park,

Perrier and Poland Spring. The company buys up pristine springs in some of the most beautiful

natural spaces in America and builds huge factories on the sites, releasing pollution into the air and

drawing enormous amounts of water out of the springs.

And, while the company claims an environmentally friendly ethic, saying it would never harm an

aquifer, that’s exactly what they have done in places likeMecosta County, Michigan, damaging the

watershed with excessive withdrawals, reaping huge profits and leaving the locals to deal with the

consequences.

Pfizer

Air and water pollution, disregard for safety standards and experimentation on Nigerian children:

these are just a few of the environmental and human rights offenses perpetrated by the world’s

largest pharmaceutical company. It’s hard to imagine how Pfizer officials can bear to look at

themselves in the mirror every day after what they’ve done.

Pfizer is guilty of some of the most despicable price gouging in corporate history: it keeps its

HIV/AIDS-related drugs out of the hands of the world’s poor, who need them the most. Pfizer has

aggressively fought efforts to make these drugs more affordable, refusing to grant generic licenses

for HIV/AIDS drugs to Brazil, South Africa and other countries in need of them.

In June 2008, Pfizer was forced to pay a $975,000 fine for violating the Clean Air Act at one of its

manufacturing plants in Groton, Connecticut – a drop in the bucket for a company that makes

upwards of $50 billion in profits every year. The Pfizer plant was emitting methanol, hydrogen

chloride, methylene chloride, MTBE, hexane, toluene and other chemicals classified by the EPA as

hazardous air pollutants. Pfizer had previously paid $430 million in 2004 to settle a large number of

outstanding asbestos lawsuits from its acquisition of Quigley Company in 1968, which had sold

contaminated insulation. It’s thanks to asbestos exposure lawyers that corrupt companies can’t get

away with these types of acts.

Worst of all, the company that has little regard for safety standards – having released a number of

drugs that ended up being pulled off the market for unforeseen complications – decided to test one

of its drugs on poor, critically ill Nigerian children. Masking the trial as a “humanitarian mission”,

Pfizer tested an experimental antibiotic called Trovan on meningitis-infected Nigerian children

without their knowledge or the knowledge of their families. 11 children died, and others developed

brain damage and crippling arthritis.

Wal-Mart

Image via Brave New Films

“Save Money, Live Better”. That’s Wal-Mart’s slogan, but Wal-Mart workers themselves certainly

wouldn’t say that they live better after beginning employment with the retail giant. A 2005 study

found that Wal-Mart reduced the take-home pay of workers by an astounding $4.7 billion dollars

annually, adding insult to injury considering that workers are often forced to work overtime for zero

pay. Wal-Mart does everything it can to deny its workers basic rights, spending an enormous amount

of time and money keeping unions out   including $7,000 anti-union camera packages, $30,000

undercover spy vans, $100,000 24-hour anti-union hotlines and a $7,000,000 rapid response team

with a corporate jet.

Furthermore, Wal-Mart pushes its suppliers to go lower and lower on their wholesale prices, until

they’re so squeezed that they barely have two pennies to rub together at the end of the day. Thanks

to its focus on low, low prices, the retailer has repeatedly turned a blind eye to child slave labor in its

manufacturing facilities abroad, particularly in China and Bangladesh.

And, despite all of their claims about ‘going green’, Wal-Mart has broken one environmental law after

the other. Wal-Mart became the first company to be fined for violating new standards for stormwater

runoff in 2001, and had to pay $5.5 million. In 2004, the company faced fines for violations in 9

states. That same year, it agreed to pay $400,000 to the government to settle claims that Sam’s

Club had violated air pollution regulations in 11 states.

Last year, the company admitted as much – but that hasn’t stopped them from continuing the PR

effort. Former CEO Lee Scott admitted of the company’s greenwashing efforts, “It has been positive

from a PR standpoint, but one of the things we learned is that we are not sophisticated enough to

spin a story — ultimately, we’d get hammered. We are not out saying we’re a green company. We

are not green. We have an extraordinary distance to go.”

ExxonMobil

Image via Greenpeace

The Exxon-Valdez oil spill is by far ExxonMobil’s most well-known environmental offense, but it’s

certainly not the only one. The oil giant was ranked sixth on the Toxic 100 list of US corporate air

polluters, and has been accused by Greenpeace of sabotaging efforts to deal with climate change,

manipulating peer-reviewed studies and misleading the public with junk science. Indeed, though they

have since cut off funding, ExxonMobil once financially supported a number of global warming denial

organizations.

Though ExxonMobil trumpeted its investment in renewable energy sources in a series of

advertisements over the past few years, the fact is that the company has invested just $300

million in renewable energy sources over the next 10 years compared to the $47 billion they spent

between 2003 and 2006 alone on dirty energy sources like oil and gas.

In 2001, ExxonMobil was the target of a lawsuit by a human rights group that accused the company

of actively abetting human rights abuses including torture, rape and killings in Indonesia. The suit

alleged that ExxonMobil had hired a local army to protect its natural gas fields in the Aceh province,

providing them with equipment to dig mass graves as well as building interrogation and torture

centers. The company denied all of the charges, but a motion it filed to have the case dismissed was

denied in 2006. The case is still pending.

Chevron

Image via Treehugger

Chevron has launched a huge multimedia advertising blitz about its supposed commitment to smart

energy use and renewable energy sources – all while destroying pristine forests in places like

Ecuador and Bangladesh, and causing myriad health problems right here in the U.S. thanks to the

toxic waste at its refineries.

Texaco (which has since been taken over by Chevron) caused a toxic “Rainforest Chernobyl” in

Ecuador from 1964 to 1992, cutting through the Amazon in search of oil and leaving behind dead

rivers, polluted air, scarred forests and over 600 unlined oil pits. They also dumped 18 billion gallons

of toxic production water into the rivers where locals bathe. Living in close proximity to the oil fields

has resulted in health effects ranging from high miscarriage rates to cancer.

In Richmond, California, toxic pollutants from Chevron’s refinery in the city have infiltrated people’s

homes. Air samples from inside and outside Richmond homes in 2006 were found to contain

particulate matter known to come from oil refining that exceeded California’s air quality standards.

Unsurprisingly, local residents are feeling the effects in the form of lupus, cancer, athsma and a

number of other health problems.

Dow Chemical

Image via Greenpeace

Dow Chemical (along with Monsanto) will never escape the shadow of Agent Orange, the chemical

used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War during the ‘Herbicidal Warfare’ program, which

lead to 400,000 deaths and disabilities and 500,000 children born with birth defects. But even with

this evil legacy – and that of Napalm, which it also produced – Dow is not contrite. This corporation

continues to pollute the earth without apology.

Two rivers downstream of Dow’s plant in Midland, Michigan are pollutedwith chlorinated furans and

dioxins from the company’s past operations. Despite the fact that these chemicals are linked to

cancer and other health issues, Dow maintains that the contamination is not a public health threat

and has been fighting with the EPA over cleanup for years. Many people in the area aren’t even

aware of the extent of the dioxin contamination, and Dow has refused to put up warning signs. Just

last weekend, Dow Chemicalsponsored a fishing event in a waterway it polluted with dioxin, never

even acknowledging the contamination and its possible effects.

Furthermore, following the purchase of Union Carbide – the company responsible for the Bhopal gas

disaster which left nearly 20,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands disabled – Dow has

refused to take responsibility for the health and environmental effects of the incident.

Monsanto

Image via Flickr user skasuga

Despite the inroads that Dow Chemical has been making lately on the evil corporation front,

Monsanto still reigns supreme. It’s hard to overstate just how socially and environmentally

irresponsible this company really is. Monsanto has manufactured herbicides (which, during

manufacturing, create dioxin as a by-product), Agent Orange, plastics, fuel additives, saccharin,

industrial fluids, fertilizers, pesticides and anti-freeze in the past. Some years ago they chose to

focus on ‘life sciences’ and are now the world’s largest seed company. They’re also the creators of

Recombitant Bovine Growth Hormone (rGBH) and the world’s largest producer of genetically

modified food.

Monsanto is responsible for more than 50 Superfund sites includingAnniston, Alabama, one of

America’s worst man-made environmental disasters. For over 40 years, Monsanto routinely dumped

toxic waste into West Anniston Creek while producing now-banned industrial coolants called PCBs.

They also dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into open-pit landfills – and proceeded to spend

decades covering it up even after confirming that fish submerged in the creek turned belly-up within

seconds.

Monsanto knew exactly how dangerous the PCBs were, but chose to keep it secret, altering

documents and forcing changes to study results to keep the secret. Though they were forced to pay

$700 million in fines in 2003, they have not apologized or taken responsibility.

On top of that, after polluting waterways all over the world, Monsanto proceeded to buy up said

waterways, filter the water and sell it back to the public, making a double profit.

Among Monsanto’s worst acts is its attempt to completely monopolize the world’s seed supply. The

company has spent over $8 billion in recent years buying up seed companies – including organic

seed companies – and making it illegal for farmers to retain the seeds from their crop for the

following year’s planting. That means farmers are forced to pay Monsanto for new seeds, again and

again. Many of Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds produce plants that are reportedly dependent

upon Monsanto herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers.

The people paying the biggest price for Monsanto’s greed are Indian farmers. Every day, at least

three of them commit suicide by hanging themselves, drowning themselves in rivers or drinking

Monsanto pesticides because they’ve hit rock bottom in desperation, hopelessness and debt. The

death toll stands at thousands, with some estimates at over 16,000. The farmers had been promised

unprecedented harvests and income if they switched to genetically modified Monsanto seeds in what

was basically one big experiment on unwitting subjects. When the crops failed, the farmers felt they

had no way out, and they certainly didn’t have money to buy more seeds.

Now, it’s been reported that Monsanto has found a way to profit from its own misdeeds once again.

In the Southeast, a “superweed” known as Palmer amaranth pigweed is taking over soybean and

cotton fields, often leaving them totally unfit for future cultivation. This particular strain of weed was

created thanks to overuse of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and the attendant use of its patented

Roundup-resistant GMOs. So, what will it take to wipe out this superweed? You guessed it – more

Monsanto herbicides.