Billions of taxpayer dollars in the U.S. are helping to pay for dangerous, and often illegal, air pollution from a rapidly-growing plastics industry that disproportionately threatens Black and Latino communities that live beside plastic manufacturing plants, according to a new report.
The Environmental Integrity Project’s report, “Feeding the Plastics Industrial Complex,” examined 50 plants that were built or expanded in the U.S. since 2012, 32 of which received a total of almost $9 billion in state and local subsidies. Two thirds of the more than 591,000 people who live within three miles of the plants are people of color.
