Plastics producers accused of ‘greenwash’

It said in a report Talking Trash that research across five continents had shown that companies most responsible for the plastic crisis had evaded accountability.

It said 10 companies had a joint plastic footprint of almost 10 million tonnes a year: Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, Danone, Mars Incorporated, Mondelēz International, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Perfetti Van Melle, Procter & Gamble and Unilever.

The campaign also looked at industry initiatives, such as the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, and said companies used these commitments to appear to support solutions.

But at the same time they used trade associations, producer responsibility organisations and “even fake environmental groups to aggressively oppose and lobby to delay progressive legislation to tackle the plastics crisis”.

The alliance earlier this month said it had 50 members, companies and projects in 14 cities across south-east Asia, India and Africa.

It said voluntary commitments focused on clean-ups, products’ recyclability or biodegradability rather than the root causes of plastic pollution, such as lack of mandatory collection of packaging and policies to increase reuse. 

Nusa Urbancic, campaigns director at the CMF, which describes itself as having a mission is to expose irresponsible corporate practices and drive change towards a more sustainable economy, said: “This report exposes the two-faced hypocrisy of plastic polluters, which claim to be committed to solutions but, at the same time, use a host of dirty tricks to ensure that they can continue pumping out cheap, disposable plastic, polluting the planet at a devastating rate.

“Plastic is now pouring into the natural world at a rate of one garbage truck a minute, creating a crisis for wildlife, the climate and public health. 

“The responsibility for this disaster lies with Big Plastic – including major household brands – which have lobbied against progressive legislation for decades, ‘greenwashed’ their environmental credentials and blamed the public for littering, rather than assuming responsibility for their own actions.”

The campaign said Coca-Cola was “the biggest plastic polluter in the world”, with a plastic footprint of 2.9 million tonnes a year.

It said that while the company had joined 10 voluntary initiatives to solve plastic waste, it also belonged to at least seven trade associations that lobbied against deposit return systems (DRSs) and other legislation to regulate single-use plastic. 

One tactic used by major plastics businesses has been to make pollution appear a problem of littering rather than manufacturing, the report said. The industry also paid for educational campaigns on recycling for consumers while producing plastic that is difficult to recycle.

The report called for legislation requiring at least 90% separate collection of plastic waste,  mandatory DRSs, reuse targets and minimum recycled content targets.

Coca-Cola and the Alliance to End Plastic Waste did not respond to requests for comment.