Sugar Beets’ Environmental Toll Isn’t That Sweet

The innocuous sugar beets that provide more than half of America’s sugar are also quietly one of the West’s largest polluters.

Sugar beet factories—known for their “rotten egg” odor—can rank as highly as other major industrial polluters such as refining, mining, and chemical manufacturing.

The nine sugar beet farmer-owned cooperatives in the U.S. have drawn repeated scrutiny from state and federal agencies over the last decade for frequently violating air, waste, water, and safety regulations, according to a Bloomberg Environment analysis.

There are only 22 sugar beet factories in U.S. compared with ...