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Green Club an EPA charade
The EPA touts the perk-filled program, but has recruited some firms with dismal environmental records.
A giant loophole
In EPA's drive to boost its Performance Track membership, it's learned not to be too picky.
To that end, Performance Track decided early on to make membership available to subsidiaries and individual facilities as opposed to simply parent corporations.
The result: A company could have some of its facilities regarded as "environmental leaders" in Performance Track while its other facilities were accused of breaking environmental laws. For example:
Monsanto Corp. won an award from Performance Track for wildlife conservation in 2005, the same year the company accepted responsibility for employees' paying a $50,000 bribe in Indonesia to skirt environmental laws, according to the Department of Justice. When Monsanto tried to win Performance Track status for its world headquarters, records show, federal prosecutors strongly objected.
Pfizer, which has nine plants in Performance Track, paid a $975,000 fine in June for allowing hazardous chemicals to leak into the air at its former factory in Groton, Conn.
In July, Bristol-Myers Squibb, with two factories in Performance Track, agreed as part of a settlement with EPA to spend $3.65 million to repair units that leaked ozone-depleting compounds into the air.
Giving companies with mixed records Performance Track recognition is troubling, said Coglianese, because the marketing value of being recognized as a green company is the main reason most companies join.
"There's no way for EPA to demarcate the public relations payoff on a facility-by-facility basis," the Penn law dean said, "and there's nothing to stop corporations from trumpeting one facility in Performance Track notwithstanding others that may well be laggards."
The EPA administrator disagrees. Corporations are like families, Johnson says, and should be treated as such.
"Say you have two boys: One of your boys does an outstanding job and the other boy messes up. Is your family a problem? Or is your one son a problem?
"The critics would say, 'Wait a minute, that's just marketing,' because the impression is that they've got all their facilities in Performance Track," Johnson says. "What's the alternative? Do nothing? No. We need to be encouraging companies to do the right thing, and make sure that there is accountability."
It doesn't work
Though Performance Track is but a small part of the EPA budget, it represents a big part of the agency's current strategy - particularly with climate change. The program was among the first to embody this underlying philosophy: coax companies - rather than coerce them - to engage in green business practices.
But from the start, the program has had its failings.
A month before George W. Bush became president, Performance Track welcomed 228 charter members. Almost everyone who applied was accepted, including some companies with questionable environmental records, such as U.S. Steel, near Pittsburgh. It was one of 82 companies asked to withdraw for failing to live up to the promise of the program, including 15 for repeated pollution violations.
The program caught the attention of Rick Otis, a former American Plastics Council lobbyist and manager of the Bush 2001 transition team for the EPA. Otis, now an EPA deputy associate administrator, made Performance Track a priority.
"It was a recognition that this is no longer an experiment," he said.
Since then, Performance Track has more than doubled its membership to 548. The office has grown from five to 18 employees - plus consultants - and from an annual budget of $910,000 to $4,700,000.
As early as 2005, internal records show, EPA enforcement officials discovered violations by Performance Track companies, and began to ask questions about compliance and corporate promises.
