A young Brazilian man collecting trash on the west side of Rio de Janeiro found a bag of potato chips older than him, which was born in 1996. His companion tried to navigate the canal using a motorboat, but plastic debris damaged the engine.
In faraway Indonesia, another young man found a number of Unilever personal care products in the Malang Regency River, packaging from around 1990 to early 2000, which, although aged and faded over time, were intact overall.
▲ Image courtesy of Break Free From Plastic
There are 11,184 volunteers like them from 45 countries and territories. As part of the environmental group Break Free From Plastic, they collect more than 330,000 pieces of plastic waste from communities around the world, 58% of which are labeled with clear consumer brands, allowing them to identify the companies with the most plastic pollution.
In the Break Free From Plastic report, Coca-Cola was named the world's largest source of corporate pollution for four consecutive years.
In addition to The number one Coca-Cola, the top 10 companies for plastic pollution in 2021 are: PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Mondelýz International, Philip Morris International, Danone, Mars and Colgate-Palm olive.
For the fourth consecutive year, Coca-Cola became the world's largest plastic polluter. Since 2019, Coca-Cola has had more plastic waste than the second and third places combined.
Coca-Cola will generate $33 billion in revenue in 2020, while the cost of collecting, sorting, disposing of and recycling plastic waste worldwide will exceed $32 billion in 2019 alone – almost the same as Coca-Cola's 2020 revenue.
▲ Image courtesy of Unsplash
As a beverage giant, PepsiCo has "played steadily" and has been in the top three every year since 2018; in four consecutive years of brand audits, Unilever rose to third for the first time this year, and it is a key partner of this year's 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.
▲ Image courtesy of Earth Island
Why are these FMCG companies resident on the rankings? The reason is that they rely heavily on single-use plastics based on fossil fuels.
More than 99% of plastic is made from fossil fuels. If the life cycle of plastics were a country, it would become the world's fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases; if left unchecked, plastic production is expected to double over the next 20 years.
The reality is not optimistic. A recent survey by the global environmental group Greenpeace showed that every FMCG company's plastics supply chain is linked to at least one fossil fuel or petrochemical company.
▲ Image courtesy of Changing Markets
While some companies have made modest cuts, Coca-Cola and Mars increased plastic production in 2020. According to a report released by Greenpeace in September, highly polluting consumer goods companies such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Pepsico are pushing the fossil fuel industry to expand plastic production.
At the same time, we've more or less heard about FMCG's environmental programs for plastics, but they haven't worked as well as they might.
At the time of this year's brand audit, Coca-Cola launched its first PET beverage bottle made of 100% plant-based plastic (in addition to caps and labels), and has produced about 900 prototype bottles.
▲ 100% plant-based PET beverage bottle. Image courtesy of: Coca-Cola's official website
In the production process, plant-based bottles can indeed save oil resources and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In 2009, Coca-Cola introduced recyclable PET plastic bottles made from 30% plant material. This year's new process replaces the original 70% oil-based material with sugar from corn and simplifies the production process, making it ready for mass production.
▲ 2009 plant bottle.
But recycling is not completely environmentally friendly. Coca-Cola promises that the appearance, function and recycling of new plant-based bottles are similar to traditional PET, the most recycled plastic, but its recycling also has many limitations.
On July 21, the environmental group Sierra Club announced a lawsuit against brands such as Coca-Cola for labeling plastic bottles "100% recyclable" and misleading consumers.
Sierra Club noted in the lawsuit that, first, the bottle label is made of non-recyclable biaxially oriented polypropylene, and second, although the bottle body is made of PET, at least 28% of PET cannot be recycled due to contamination and processing losses.
Coupled with the fact that the cost of new materials is much lower than the cost of recycling, plastic waste can not be effectively collected and transported, most plastic bottles will eventually enter landfills, incinerators, oceans, rivers, and even everywhere.
In 2019, only 1.9% of the plastic packaging used or produced by major plastic polluting companies was reusable.
▲ Image from: GETTY IMAGES
In addition, plant-based PET is still PET and is difficult to degrade in the natural environment if it is not recycled or reused. Also of concern is the possibility that plant bottles may increase the demand for growing land that could otherwise be used to grow food crops.
The so-called 100% plant-based bottle is not an environmental medal, and it only makes sense to ensure 100% recycling.
But FMCG companies often like to use one-sided "recycling" actions to establish an environmental image.
In 2018, Coca-Cola announced that it had made about 300 vials using 25% marine plastic recycled from the Mediterranean. Environmental groups point out that most marine plastics are too small and too far and too deep for only the trash that comes to the beach with the tides to be cleaned up.
Ironically, the number of plastic products that enter the oceans in a year is staggering, and Coca-Cola's plastic footprint is particularly far-reaching.
▲ Coca-Cola ocean bottle.
These companies also have a lot of "announce and then do nothing" projects. In 2019, P&G pledged to build a recycling facility in India, after which a P&G spokesperson said the company did not set a date for the opening of recycling facilities in India; in 2020, Coca-Cola's refilled glass bottles accounted for 9.3% of total packaging, even lower than 11.7% in 2018.
These moves often shine brightly when they are first launched, and eventually quietly exit.
There are also some environmental protection projects that have gone to the opposite side of environmental protection. Unilever commissioned a local waste collection partner to provide the collected plastic waste to the cement kiln. But cement kilns can also cause air and water pollution and a lot of carbon emissions, and burning plastic will never be the solution.
Therefore, all kinds of undesirable environmental protection projects are more like mounting flowers in vain.
In 2019, Coca-Cola invested $4.24 billion in advertising and marketing, compared to just $11 million in the river cleanup program in the same year, which looks more like a PR stunt.
Earlier this year, a report commissioned by Break Free From Plastic attacked companies such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo for "lacking the ambition to change." Abigail Aguilar, Greenpeace's Regional Coordinator for Southeast Asia, said of Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Nestlé:
The companies claim to be tackling the plastics crisis, but they continue to invest in the wrong solutions while working with oil companies to produce more plastic. To stem this chaos and combat climate change, multinationals like these must end their reliance on single-use plastic packaging and stay away from fossil fuels.
Environmental groups believe that the best way to address the plastic footprint is to reduce the production of plastic first, taking practical action to solve the problem at the source, rather than cleaning it up after it has entered the environment.
FMCG companies' slow pace or even regression on the road to environmental protection is the reason why environmental organizations conduct brand audits:
69 of the world's 100 largest economies are companies, not countries. Business actors must lead the way to a plastic-free and climate-safe future because they have the power, means and resources to change this vision into reality. If the status quo is maintained, these corporate polluters are shifting the burden on young people, low-income communities, and less developed countries.
The biggest plastic polluters have made voluntary commitments. In 2018, Coca-Cola announced its "Waste-Free World" program, recycling one bottle for every bottle of Coke sold by 2030 and reducing the use of 3 million tons of virgin plastics from petroleum by 2025.
▲ Image from: Coca-Cola official website
Perhaps because of limited time, or perhaps because efforts are fragmented and inadequate, these commitments make little difference.
Plastic production will triple by 2050, with 42% of all non-fibre plastics manufactured to date already used for packaging, most likely for FMCG companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble.
The core problem is that if the business models of these companies are not changed, it will be difficult to truly close the source of plastic pollution. Break Free From Plastic proposes that the things companies must do are:
Disclose the full scope of the plastic footprint; significantly reduce the amount of plastic produced; reshape packaging to make it reusable and plastic-free; and establish reuse and refill systems.
The case can be referred to is that countries such as Germany, Sweden and Denmark are implementing a deposit return system, where the returned glass bottle can be reused 50 times and the plastic bottle can be reused 15 times; the soda beverage machines commonly found in movie theaters and fast food restaurants and the home delivery system are also worth implementing.
▲ Image courtesy of Avantium's official website
Plant-based bottles from Dutch sustainable chemical company Avantium may be a better solution than plant-based PET. Avantium says the bottles are better than PET as containers for soda and other products, and decompose completely within a year in a composting facility and within a few years in their natural environment. But even if the effect is true, it will be many years away from actually replacing PET.
The popular bottles of the future will still be the PET bottles of today. But we need to have the ability to collect it, recycle it, and recycle it again. That's the future.
At the same time, governments must enact legally binding treaties that expose violators of corporate polluters to serious legal and financial consequences. Neil Tangri, director of science and policy for global incinerator alternatives, noted in a statement:
Despite their promise to do better, they are on the brand vetting list year after year. Obviously, we can't rely on these companies to do the right thing. It is time for governments to step up policies to reduce waste and hold producers accountable.
An interesting detail was highlighted in the brand audit report – this year's brand audit report highlighted the voices of youth from around the world, and 20% of the report was done by youth, including the young people mentioned at the beginning.
▲ Image courtesy of Sierra Club
An important reason is that young people will lose the most in the future if the plastic pollution crisis is not solved.
In the brand audit report, they made this call:
We won't accept tomorrow's sea-level rise and the disappearance of coastal communities in exchange for today's single-use plastic cutlery; we won't accept tomorrow's droughts, heat waves, and forest fires in exchange for today's single-use plastic bags. We will not accept tomorrow's superstorms and other extreme weather events in exchange for today's individually packaged consumer goods; today's "convenience" will cause chaos tomorrow. Unless short-term profit-oriented businesses act now, young people will inherit a climate-turbulent world.
and other extreme weather events in exchange for today's individually packaged consumer goods; today's "convenience" will cause chaos tomorrow.