Fifty-six multinationals are responsible for more than half of the world’s branded plastic pollution, with five companies producing nearly a quarter of that, a study has unveiled.
The research, published in ScienceAdvance and co-authored by an international group of scientists, is based on data from 1,576 audit events across 84 countries carried out by the Break Free From Plastic initiative.
“This research provides the first quantification of global producer contribution to branded plastic pollution,” said Kathy Willis from Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and one of the authors of the study.
“The findings suggest that single-use packaging significantly contributes to branded plastic pollution. This data can help inform ways to address plastic production and reduce plastic waste ending up in the environment.”
According to the scientists, 56 big multinationals account for over 50% of the global plastic pollution, with five companies responsible for 24% of the total branded count: Coca-Cola Company (11%), PepsiCo (5%), Nestle (3%), Danone (3%), and Altria (2%).
“The top firm, The Coca-Cola Company, was responsible for 11%, significantly greater than any other company,” the study said.
Over five years (2018-22), researchers collected 1.87 million items of plastic waste, with audit events highly concentrated in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America.
The authors also reported that 13 companies – all of them delivering food, beverage, or tobacco products – have an individual contribution of 1% or more of the total branded plastic observed in the audit events.
“One of the main challenges of addressing plastic pollution is identifying where the plastic products come from and who produced them,” the study said.
“These audit events have suggested that the largest companies in the food and tobacco sectors were the largest polluters in their region.”
A map depicting where each of the 1,576 audit events occurred. Source: Science Advances
FOCUS ON PRODUCTION
According to the authors, there is a direct correlation between the amount of plastic produced and the amount of plastic pollution in the environment.
“There was a clear and strong log-log linear relationship [between] production [and] pollution between companies’ annual production of plastic and their branded plastic pollution, with food and beverage companies being disproportionately large polluters,” the study said.
“Plastic production has doubled from approximately 200 million tonnes of total production in 2000, to more than 400 mln tonnes in 2019.”
During the last few weeks, plastic pollution has drawn global attention, with the fourth round of negotiations on the UN plastic treaty currently taking place in Ottawa, Canada.
The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) is tasked with developing an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, and the process is slated to conclude by the end of the year at the INC-5 session in Busan, South Korea.
A large part of the talks is focused on the dichotomy between production reduction and waste management.
Some of the negotiators are urging binding requirements to reduce the use of virgin plastic polymers and restrict toxic plastics, while the plastic industry and major oil and petrochemical exporters argue that the text should focus on waste management.
According to Greenpeace, INC-4 is facing an increase in the number of fossil fuel and chemistry lobbyists, with 196 representatives from the sectors registered for the plastics treaty talks. The figure represents a 37% increase from the 143 lobbyists registered at INC-3.
ACCOUNTABILITY
A key insight from the study is that over 50% of plastic items were unbranded, which led researchers to highlight the need for better transparency about the production and labelling of plastic products and packaging to enhance traceability and accountability.
“It is important to note that the contributions of the top companies may be an underestimation because there were brands that were not attributed to a company, and there were many unbranded objects,” the study pointed out.
Since only a few companies are responsible for half of branded plastic pollution, the authors argued that action by these firms, whether voluntary or mandated by governments or an international legally binding instrument, can positively address the problem.
“We suggest the creation of an international, open-access database into which companies are obliged to quantitatively track and report their products, packaging, brands, and releases to the environment.”
“Additionally, we recommend the development of international standards around the branding of packaging to facilitate their identification,” the authors concluded.
By Giada Ferraglioni – giada@carbon-pulse.com
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