Business Concentrates ENVIRONMENT
China jails managers for pollution Case provides a look into how some companies evade environmental regulations
MERGERS
“The outcome of the merger is, of course, still very open.” —European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager addressing the antitrust review of the Dow Chemical-DuPont merger in an interview with Bloomberg after a Jan. 9 meeting with the companies. Vestager said the EU is examining how the merger will affect product innovation and farmer choice in seeds and crop protection chemicals.
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JANUARY 16, 2017
The captain led investigators to Jun Wang, a manager at Dystar’s plant in Nanjing. From 2010 to 2014, Wang had conspired with a local truck fleet owner, Zhanrong Wang, to dispose of DyStar’s waste sulfuric acid at a price of $84 per metric ton. Their scheme also involved one of the company’s floor managers, Jinjun Huang, and the plant manager, surnamed Li. Whenever DyStar’s tanks of spent sulfuric acid became full, Wang’s trucks would come to transport the material to Ding’s ships. After dark, the ships would then dump the waste in the Taidong River and the New Tongyang Canal. Over four years, DyStar disposed of nearly 3,000 metric tons of its hazardous waste in this manner. A German firm until 2010, DyStar was bought in 2010 by India’s Kiri Industries and
China’s Zhejiang Longsheng Group. While in German hands, the Nanjing plant disposed of its waste legally for about $430 per metric ton, Chinese investigators found. DyStar tells C&EN that the fraud occurred while a non-Chinese-speaking executive who couldn’t review necessary documents was in charge of the Nanjing business. “Management has neither authorized nor tolerated the illegal disposal of waste material at any time,” the company says. The $3 million fine that the court levied on DyStar is a record for the province of Jiangsu. The court also sentenced the leaders of the conspiracy to jail terms of three to five years.—JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
J&J to set up NYC incubator Johnson & Johnson is joining with the New York Genome Center to open a biotech incubator at the center’s site in New York City. Established in 2013, the nonprofit has 18 research institutions as its members. The state will contribute $17 million toward the JLABS@NYC facility, which will open in 2018. Able to house up to 30 start-ups, the 2,800-m2 incubator is the seventh JLABS set up by J&J in five years. Biotech, pharma, medical device, and consumer health firms can apply to become residents. A rent-free year at JLABS@NYC is the prize in a new J&J challenge seeking “cross-sector solutions to prevent, intercept, or cure diseases.” JLABS facilities have incubated more than 200 start-ups and are now home to more than 140, J&J says. The labs provide access to scientific, industry, and investment experts, along with third-party services. Al-
though J&J’s incubator model is “no strings attached,” 33 collaborations have arisen between the company and JLABS residents. JLABS@NYC is part of a push by New York State to build bioscience capabilities. New York ranks in the top 20% among U.S. states in bioscience employment and R&D spending, according to a 2016 report from TEConomy Partners and the trade group Biotechnology Innovation Organization. And bioscience venture funding has risen rapidly to total $458 million in 2015. But New York City lacks affordable lab space for new companies. Just recently, Alexandria LaunchLabs began making seed funds and lab space available for start-ups at the Alexandria Center for Life Science on Manhattan’s East Side. And in late 2016, the city itself said it plans to build a $100 million applied life sciences campus nearby.—ANN THAYER
CREDIT: TREMBLAY
A court in China has fined the dye producer DyStar $3 million for environmental crimes and sent some of the company’s managers to jail. The case helps explain why China’s rivers still suffer from severe pollution despite the country’s strict regulations. According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, 28% of rivers and lakes in China were “unfit for human contact” in 2015. In May 2014, public security officials from the city of Yangzhou boarded a ship owned by a local merchant, Weidong Ding, as part of an inquiry into illegal industrial waste dumping in the area’s rivers. Once aboard, according to an account posted on a city court website, investigators became suspicious of the ship’s smell. They took the captain into custody after discovering tons of hazardous industrial waste on-board.
More than a quarter of China’s rivers are dangerously polluted. Shown here is the Yangzi River flowing through Jiujiang, Hubei province.
