Brands and plastic pollution

The Break Free From Plastic movement is demanding that companies such as Nestlé, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo stop producing single-use plastic, and that policymakers legislate against it.

Up to 12 million tonnes of plastic, often single-use items including packaging, enter the sea from land every year. With plastic production expected to increase, and waste management and recycling schemes failing to keep up, the problem needs to be tackled by the brands who are putting all this single-use plastic in circulation.

Brands on beaches

The Break Free From Plastic movement, which includes Greenpeace, is calling on local communities across the globe to use beach clean-ups to help identify the main global polluters.

The first of these ‘brand audits’ took the form of an eight-day beach clean-up carried out by a large number of volunteers in the Philippines this September. Now, brand audits have started in other countries including Croatia, Spain and the Netherlands.

Early results suggest globally recognised brands from global fast-moving consumer goods companies such as Nestlé, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are among the top polluters. All data and details of the methodology can be viewed here.

‘The newly devised brand audit methodology, tested in several countries, is revealing that the worst plastic polluters are some of the biggest companies in the world – those are clearly the ones who need to take responsibility. Producing and using absurd amounts of single-use plastics day after day is clearly devastating for our oceans. The only solution is to stop this practice by developing alternative delivery models. We will never be able to recycle our way out of this crisis. Both governments and companies have to start phasing out the worst single-use plastics.’

DR SANDRA SCHÖTTNER
Oceans and plastics campaigner, Greenpeace Germany