The results of Break Free From Plastic’s annual Brand Audit Report have been released today, confirming that, for the third year in row, the same few companies are responsible for the vast quantities of single-use plastic polluting our planet.
In total, during August and September, 14,734 volunteers in 55 countries conducted 575 brand audits, collecting 346,494 pieces of plastic waste and recording the type and the company that produced it. 15% (90) of these audits were carried out by our own Trash Hero volunteers at their weekly cleanup – a fantastic contribution to the research that we are very proud of. And, for the first time, more than 300 waste pickers were engaged across the Global South to audit the waste they sort on a daily basis.
Despite the challenges of organising during a global pandemic, the volunteers safely coordinated more brand audit events in more countries this year than in the previous two years.
63% of the plastic collected in the 2020 study was marked with a clear consumer brand. In total, more than 5,000 brands were catalogued. Analysis from Break Free From Plastic revealed the following as the 2020 Top 10 Global Polluters:
- The Coca-Cola Company;
- PepsiCo;
- Nestlé;
- Unilever;
- Mondelez International;
- Mars, Inc.;
- Procter & Gamble;
- Philip Morris International;
- Colgate-Palmolive; and
- Perfetti Van Melle.
From the executive summary of the report, which Trash Hero translated into Indonesian, Malay and Thai to help disseminate the information to a wider audience:
“The title of Top Global Polluters describes the parent companies whose brands were recorded polluting the most places around the world with the greatest amount of plastic waste. The 2020 Top Global Polluters remain remarkably consistent with previous brand audit reports, demonstrating that the same corporations are continuing to pollute the most places with the most single-use plastic. Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo have remained the Top Three Global Polluters every year since [BFFP’s] first global brand audit in 2018.
For the third consecutive year, Coca-Cola emerged as the #1 Top Global Polluter. A total of 13,834 branded Coca-Cola plastics were recorded in 51 countries, reflecting more plastic than the next two top global polluters combined. These results amount to a significant increase, as 2,102 more branded Coca-Cola plastic items were recorded in 14 more countries in 2020 than in last year’s global brand audit.
Seven of the top polluters — The Coca-Cola Company; PepsiCo; Nestlé; Unilever; Mondelez International; Mars, Inc.; and Colgate-Palmolive — have joined The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, but this is not enough. According to a recent Ellen MacArthur report, the signatories to the New Plastic Economy Global Commitment have only reduced their use of virgin plastic by only 0.1% from 2018 to 2019.
The Break Free From Plastic movement is calling on companies to urgently reduce the amount of single-use plastic they use. The top polluters must reveal how much single-use plastic they use, then set clear, measurable targets for reducing the quantity of single-use plastic items they produce. Finally, they must reinvent their product delivery systems to move beyond single-use plastic altogether.”
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