Analysis released this week shows that a small handful of companies and banks are behind the production of most single-use plastics. Only 20 companies are responsible for producing over 50% of the “throwaway” single-use plastic that ends up as waste worldwide.
This is the first time the financial and material flows of single-use plastic production have been mapped globally and traced back to their source.
Toby Gardner, Director of Trase and Senior Research Fellow at SEI, who advised in parts of the analysis
Single-use plastics – the cheap plastic goods we use once and then throw away – epitomize the plastics crisis. Today, single-use plastics account for over a third of plastics produced every year, with 98% manufactured from fossil fuels.
The plastification of our oceans and the warming of our planet are amongst the greatest threats humanity and nature have ever confronted. Global efforts will not be enough to reverse this crisis unless government, business and financial leaders act in our children's and grandchildren's interests.
Dr Andrew Forrest AO, Chairman and Co-Founder, Minderoo Foundation
Tracing the root causes of the plastic waste crisis empowers us to help solve it. The trajectories of the climate crisis and the plastic waste crisis are strikingly similar and increasingly intertwined.
Al Gore, former US Vice President
Published by the Minderoo Foundation, the Plastic Waste Makers Index has been developed with partners including Wood Mackenzie, and experts from the London School of Economics and the Stockholm Environment Institute, among others. SEI Senior Research Fellow Toby Gardner advised on the work, and the Trase initiative contributed to the development of datasets and methods used in the report.
Key messages from the analysis include:
Toby Gardner responded to the question “Is change possible?” in an interview with TRT World:
“Change must be possible – there are few issues that attract so much attention as plastic pollution. The fact that we all have tiny plastic particles in our bodies should give us all sufficient pause for thought. We need to reduce the use of single-use plastics, but where they are necessary it is vital that we drive a transition towards a circular economy based on recycled materials and not virgin polymers from fossil fuels. Consumer pressure is key, but the real action needs to come from companies, investors and governments.”
“Revealing the sheer scale of the global crisis we have on our hands, it’s critical we break the pattern of inaction. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Building on this unique analysis just published, it is very important that the small group of companies and banks that dominate global production of throwaway plastics begin to disclose their own data,” Gardner concluded.
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