Bunge Limited

Bunge North America discharged approximately 20,000 gallons of mixed soybean oil and water into the Ohio River from its Cairo, Illinois facility on or about February 2, 2022, in violation of Section 311(b)(3) of the Clean Water Act. The EPA proposed a Consent Agreement and Final Order requiring Bunge to pay a $91,418 civil penalty to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.

This follows a larger pattern of environmental violations at Bunge's processing facilities. In October 2006, the Department of Justice and EPA reached a $13.9 million Clean Air Act settlement with Bunge covering 12 soybean and corn processing plants across eight states — Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The U.S. alleged that Bunge constructed major modifications at some or all of these plants that increased emissions without obtaining pre-construction permits. The settlement required pollution control projects estimated at $12 million to eliminate more than 2,200 tons of harmful emissions annually, including 1,122 tons per year of volatile organic compounds (including hexane, a listed hazardous air pollutant), plus reductions in SO2, NOx, and particulate matter.

Bunge Limited has set science-based targets validated by the SBTi, but its climate policy engagement remains limited and its targets exclude material scope categories. The company’s validated targets cover Scope 1 and 2 emissions and a portion of Scope 3, but they notably omit emissions from land-use change linked to its agricultural supply chains, a dominant source of its climate impact. In 2022, shareholders urged a vote against the board, citing failure to set an adequate net-zero target and to realign capital expenditures with climate goals. While Bunge discloses some policy engagement, its overall stance is assessed as having limited ambition on policies related to land use and deforestation. This combination of an incomplete emissions target and insufficient policy advocacy places the company behind peers in aligning its operations with a low-carbon transition.

Joao Gonçalves, the senior director for Mighty Earth in Brazil, said Bunge, Cargill and JBS are the “worst culprits for driving deforestation” in the country. Trase data suggests the company is directly tied to the conversion of 77,000 hectares of rainforest into farmland in order to cultivate soy.