Study confirms Altria, Philip Morris International, Danone, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are worst offenders

Fewer than 60 multinationals are responsible for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, with six responsible for a quarter of that, based on the findings of a piece of research published on Wednesday.

The researchers concluded that for every percentage increase in plastic produced, there was an equivalent increase in plastic pollution in the environment.

“Production really is pollution,” says one of the study’s authors, Lisa Erdle, director of science at the non-profit The 5 Gyres Institute.

An international team of volunteers collected and surveyed more than 1,870,000 items of plastic waste across 84 countries over five years: the bulk of the rubbish collected was single-use packaging for food, beverage, and tobacco products.

  • jeffw@lemmy.worldM
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    7 months ago

    The top five brands globally were The Coca-Cola Company (11%), PepsiCo (5%), Nestlé (3%), Danone (3%), and Altria (2%), accounting for 24% of the total branded count

    I would’ve expected a slightly different order, but those companies also control about 24% of the food we buy, so… not surprising.

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      They mostly don’t make their own plastic containers. You have to make a shitton of plastic bottles and caps to make money and there are companies that only make empty plastic bottles and companies that only make plastic caps.

      • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I didn’t know why I’m being downvoted, I worked at a plastic bottle factory making millions of bottles per day for many different big companies, including some listed there. They make the bottles and ship them empty to the companies to be filled.

      • jeffw@lemmy.worldM
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        7 months ago

        Did you read the article? It’s not about who made the plastic containers at all, it’s about which company made the product that they contain.

        • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          When they hire a private company to make their packaging, then there are no public records on how much plastic they actually buy. (It’s in the millions of tons per year range) It also doesn’t account for the amount of energy used to produce packaging (it’s a a fuckton)