Among the global businesses responsible for 55% of the world's plastic packaging waste are both state-owned and multinational corporations, including oil and gas giants and chemical companies, according to a comprehensive new analysis.

Top 20 producers of single-use plastic

The Plastic Waste Makers index reveals for the first time the companies who produce the polymers that become throwaway plastic items, from face masks to plastic bags and bottles, which at the end of their short life pollute the oceans or are burned or thrown into landfill.

It also reveals Australia leads a list of countries for generating the most single-use plastic waste on a per capita basis, ahead of the United States, South Korea and Britain.

ExxonMobil is the greatest single-use plastic waste polluter in the world, contributing 5.9m tonnes to the global waste mountain, concludes the analysis by the Minderoo Foundation of Australia with partners including Wood Mackenzie, the London School of Economics and Stockholm Environment Institute.

The largest chemicals company in the world, Dow, which is based in the US, created 5.5m tonnes of plastic waste, while China's oil and gas enterprise, Sinopec, created 5.3m tonnes.

Eleven of the companies are based in Asia, four in Europe, three in North America, one in Latin America, and one in the Middle East. Their plastic production is funded by leading banks, chief among which are Barclays, HSBC, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.

The enormous plastic waste footprint of the top 20 global companies amounts to more than half of the 130m metric tonnes of single-use plastic thrown away in 2019, the analysis says.

It's not just oceans: scientists find plastic is also polluting the air

Single-use plastics are made almost exclusively from fossil fuels, driving the climate crisis, and because they are some of the hardest items to recycle, they end up creating global waste mountains. Just 10%-15% of single-use plastic is recycled globally each year.

The analysis provides an unprecedented glimpse into the small number of petrochemicals companies, and their financial backers, which generate almost all single-use plastic waste across the world.

Al Gore, the environmentalist and former US vice-president, said the groundbreaking analysis exposed how fossil fuel companies were rushing to switch to plastic production as two of their main markets - transport and electricity generation - were being decarbonised.

"Since most plastic is made from oil and gas - especially fracked gas - the production and consumption of plastic are becoming a significant driver of the climate crisis," said Gore.

"Moreover, the plastic waste that results - particularly from single-use plastics - is piling up in landfills, along roadsides, and in rivers that carry vast amounts into the ocean."

The plastic waste crisis grows every year. In the next five years, global capacity to produce virgin polymers for single-use plastics could grow by more than 30%.

By 2050 plastic is expected to account for 5%-10% of greenhouse gas emissions. Continue reading

Although the final list of banned items is still undetermined, it will likely include plastic bags, takeaway containers, cutlery and straws.

To further justify the ban, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna cited images of marine wildlife being injured or killed as a result of plastic in our oceans.

It's a hard-to-resist pitch.

No one wants to contribute to marine deaths as a result of plastic, and most of us don't like the idea of plastic items taking over 1,000 years to decompose in landfills.

These concerns ultimately stem from worries about climate change, and the environmental problems that could arise as a result.

Unfortunately for the environmentally conscious among us, a ban on single-use plastics does almost nothing for the issue of plastics impacting ocean marine life, and does very little in terms of environmental impact.

Canadians are not significant polluters when it comes to marine litter.

Up to 95 per cent of all plastic found in the world's oceans comes from just 10 source rivers, which are all in the developing world.

Canada on average, contributes less than 0.01 MT (millions of metric tonnes) of mismanaged plastic waste.

In contrast, countries like Indonesia and the Philippines contribute 10.1 per cent and 5.9 per cent of the world's mismanaged plastic, which is upwards of 300 times Canada's contribution.

China, the world's largest plastics polluter, accounts for 27.7 per cent of the worlds mismanaged plastic.

Canada, when compared to European countries like England, Spain, Italy, Portugal and France, actually contributes four times less in mismanaged plastic.

The only European countries on par with Canada are the significantly smaller Sweden, Norway and Finland.

A plastics ban might sound productive in terms of plastics pollution, but the evidence doesn't suggest that Canada is actually a significant contributor for mismanaged plastic, which means that a Canadian ban will do little to aid marine life devastatingly impacted by plastic pollution.

However, proponents will say we should still support the ban on the basis of trying to curb climate change.

Although noble, banning plastics doesn't necessarily equate to better environmental outcomes.

In fact, some alternative products, although branded as green alternatives, have a significantly higher total environmental impact once the production process is factored in.

Take plastic bags for example, which are public enemy number one.

Conventional thinking suggests that banning single-use plastic bags will result in people using reusable bags, and that this reduction in plastic use will have a positive impact on the environment.

Calculated number of primary reuse times for the carrier bags in the rows, for their most preferable disposal option, necessary to provide the same environmental performance of the average LDPE carrier bag, reused as a waste bin bag before incin-eration.

Research from Denmark's Ministry of the Environment actually challenged that conventional wisdom when it sought to compare the total impact of plastic bags to their reusable counterparts.

The Danes found that alternatives to plastic bags came with significant negative externalities.

For example, common paper bag replacements needed to be reused 43 times to have the same total impact as a plastic bag.

When it came to cotton alternatives, the numbers were even higher.

A conventional cotton bag alternative needed to be used over 7,100 times to equal a plastic bag, while an organic cotton bag had to be reused over 20,000 times.

We know from consumer usage patterns that the likelihood of paper or cotton alternatives being used in such a way is incredibly unlikely.

These results were also largely confirmed with the U.K. government's own life-cycle assessment, which concluded that these alternatives have a significantly higher total impact on the environment. Continue reading

Sources

• Ministry of Environment Denmark: Life cycle assessment of green carrier bags
• Image: Financial Post

In the name of profit and convenience, corporations are literally choking our planet with a substance that does not just "go away" when we toss it into a bin.

Since the 1950s, some 8.3bn tons of plastic have been produced worldwide, and to date, only 9% of that has been recycled.

Our oceans bear the brunt of our plastics epidemic - up to 12.7m tons of plastic end up in them every year.

Just over a decade ago, I launched the Story of Stuff to help shine a light on the ways we produce, use and dispose of the stuff in our lives.

The Story of Stuff is inextricably linked to the story of plastics - the packaging that goes along with those endless purchases.

We buy a soda, sip it for a few minutes, and toss its permanent packaging "away".

We eat potato chips, finish them, then throw their permanent packaging "away".

We buy produce, take it out of the unnecessary plastic wrap, then throw its permanent packaging "away".

The cycle is endless, and it happens countless times every single day.

But here's the catch - there is no "away".

As far as we try to toss a piece of plastic - whether it's into a recycling bin or not - it does not disappear. Chances are, it ends up polluting our communities, oceans or waterways in some form.

For years, we've been conned into thinking the problem of plastic packaging can be solved through better individual action.

We're told that if we simply recycle we're doing our part.

We're told that if we bring reusable bags to the grocery store, we're saving the world.

We think that if we drink from a reusable bottle, we're making enough of a difference. But the truth is that we cannot recycle our way out of this mess.

Recycling alone will never stem the flow of plastics into our oceans; we have to get to the source of the problem and slow down the production of all this plastic waste.

Think about it: if your home was flooding because you had left the faucet on, your first step wouldn't be to start mopping.

You'd first cut the flooding off at its source - the faucet. In many ways, our plastics problem is no different. Continue reading

• Image: Inhabit

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