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Greenpeace exposes plastic polluters


Are we really getting to grips with plastic?

Coke, Nestlé, and PepsiCo have topped the list of world’s worst plastic polluters for the second year running, a global survey by Break Free From Plastic has found.

As part of World Cleanup Day in September, volunteers from the UK and more than 50 other countries collected plastic and logged the brands of the litter that they found. 

A report published this month, “BRANDED Volume II: Identifying the World’s Top Corporate Plastic Polluters.”, reveals the other companies in the list of top 10 polluters are Mondelēz International, Unilever, Mars, P&G, Colgate-Palmolive, Phillip Morris, and Perfetti Van Melle.

It follows a Greenpeace US report earlier this month which criticised the use of false solutions to cut plastics, such as swapping throwaway plastic for throwaway paper, or bio-based plastics.

Louise Edge, head of Greenpeace UK’s ocean plastics campaign said: “Yet again we’re seeing these corporate giants such as Coke, Nestlé, and Pepsi polluting our rivers and beaches with plastic.

“But when it comes to their policies on plastics, it’s clear that these huge global brands are planning to fail. They’ll continue to be the worst polluters for years to come unless they radically change their policies.

“These companies have the resources to come up with innovative reusable and refillable packaging. But instead, they focus on recycling or swapping from one throwaway packaging to another. We urge these plastic polluters to focus on switching to reusable and refillable packaging now.”

Greenpeace has analysed recent plastics announcements from Coke, Nestlé, and PepsiCo and found that companies have few measures to actually reduce plastic, and are focusing too much on recycling.
Acknowledgements and source: Greenpeace UK. 

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