The more plastic a company makes, the more pollution it creates.
That seemingly obvious, yet previously unproven point is the most important takeaway from a first of its kind study Published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Researchers from a dozen universities around the world found that, for every 1 percent increase in the amount of plastic a company uses, there is a corresponding 1 percent increase in its contribution to global plastic trash.
In other words, if Coca-Cola produces one-tenth of the world’s plastic, the research predicts that the beverage behemoth is responsible for about one-tenth of identifiable plastic litter on beaches or in parks, rivers and other ecosystems.
That finding “shocked me a lot, I was really upset,” said Win Cowger, a researcher at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research and the study’s lead author. This suggests that companies’ much-proclaimed efforts to reduce their plastic footprint are “not doing much at all” and that more is needed to get them to scale back the amount of plastic they produce.
Notably, it supports calls from delegates to the United Nations’ global plastics treaty — which is undergoing its fourth round of discussions in Ottawa, Canada until Tuesday — to limit production as a primary way to “end plastic pollution.”
“What the data says is that if the status quo doesn’t change in a big way — if social norms around the rapid consumption and production of new materials don’t change — we’re not going to see what we want,” Cowger said. said Grist.
That plastic production should be correlated with plastic pollution is intuitive, but until now there has been little quantitative research to prove this – especially on a company-by-company basis. Perhaps the most important related research in this area appeared in a 2020 article published in Environmental Science and Technology showing that overall marine plastic pollution has grown along with global plastic production. Other research since then has shown the rapidly growing “plastic smog” in the world’s oceans and predict a increase in plastic production over the next few decades.
The Sciences Advances article uses more than 1,500 “brand audits” between 2018 and 2022 coordinated by Break Free From Plastic, a coalition of more than 3,000 environmental organizations. Volunteers in 84 countries collected more than 1.8 million pieces of plastic waste and counted the number of items contributed by specific companies.
About half of the trash collected by volunteers could not be linked to a specific company, either because it never had a logo or because the branding had faded or worn off. Among the rest, a small handful of companies – mostly in the food and beverage sector – showed up the most. The top polluters were Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone, Altria – the parent company of Philip Morris USA – and Philip Morris International (which is a separate company that sells many of the same products).
More than 1 in 10 of the pieces come from Coca-Cola, the biggest polluter by a significant margin. Overall, just 56 companies were responsible for half of the plastic carriers that have identifiable brands.
The researchers plotted each company’s contribution to plastic pollution against its contribution to global plastic production (defined by mass, rather than the number of items). The result was the neat, one-to-one relationship between production and pollution that caused Cowger so much distress.
Many of the top polluters identified in the study have made voluntary commitments to address their excessive plastic footprint. For example, Coca-Cola says it intends to use “virgin plastic derived from non-renewable sources” by 3 million metric tons over the next five years, and to sell in a quarter of its beverages reusable or refillable containers by 2030. By that date, the company also aims to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one it sells. Pepsi has a similar target as reduce virgin plastic use to 20 percent below a 2018 baseline by the end of the decade. Nestlé says it has reduced unusual plastic use by 10.5 percent from 2022, and plans to achieve further reductions by 2025.
In response to Grist’s request for comment, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola listed several of the company’s targets to reduce plastic packaging, increase recycled content and scale up reusable alternatives. “We care about the impact of every drink we sell and are committed to growing our business the right way,” the spokesperson said.
Four of the other top polluting companies did not respond to a request for comment.
It is worth noting that many of the companies’ plans involve replacing virgin plastic with recycled material. This does not necessarily address the problem outlined in the Science Advances study, as plastic products are not less likely to become litter simply because they are made from recycled content. There’s also a limit to the number of times plastic can be recycled – experts are just saying two or three times — before it has to be sent to a landfill or an incinerator. Many plastic items cannot be recycled at all.
Richard Thompson, a professor of marine biology at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom, praised the researchers for a “very useful contribution to our understanding of the relationship between production and pollution.” He said the findings could shape regulations to make companies financially responsible for plastic waste – based on the specific amount they contribute to the environment.
The findings could also inform this week’s negotiations for the UN’s global plastics treaty, where delegates continue to spar over whether and how to limit production. According to Cowger, if the treaty truly aims to “end plastic pollution” – as its mandate states – negotiators will need to think beyond voluntary measures and regulating large producers.
“It’s not going to be Coca-Cola or some other big company saying, ‘I’m going to reduce my plastic by 2030, you’ll see,'” Cowger told Grist. “It’s going to be a country that says, ‘If you don’t reduce by 2030, you’re going to be hit with a big fine.’
