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Coca-Cola, Nestle, and PepsiCo Are the Top 3 Plastic Polluters on the Planet (onegreenplanet.org) 181

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An annual global audit from the Break Free From Plastic movement has found the largest sources of plastic pollution. Coca-Cola, Nestle, and PepsiCo are the top three most identified companies as sources of plastic pollution around the globe. From a report: As part of their audit, Break Free From Plastic conducted 484 cleanups in 50 countries, on six continents. According to the audit, part of the problem is that plastic is not recyclable. Only 9% of plastic produced since 1950 has been recycled. The rest is incinerated, in landfills or left pollution in oceans, land and other areas. When plastic is burned it causes toxic pollution. If not incinerated or recycled, it breaks down into microplastics, which cause harm to ocean life. 43% of collected plastic was marked with a clear consumer brand, like Coca-Cola or PepsiCo. Break Free From Plastic blames our "throwaway culture," for much of the consumer waste. They argue that this throwaway mindset is at the core of many companies' business model.
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Coca-Cola, Nestle, and PepsiCo Are the Top 3 Plastic Polluters on the Planet More

Coca-Cola, Nestle, and PepsiCo Are the Top 3 Plastic Polluters on the Planet

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  • more accurately (Score:5, Informative)

    by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @01:17PM (#59367034)

    More accurately, it's their customers that are the polluters.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Presence Eternal ( 56763 )

      More accurately, the Yangtze river is towers over them all like a titan vomiting endless streams of of protean goo. But hey, let's all hate on Coke because that's a target we can hit, no matter how irrelevant the hit will be.

    • Even that's not true. I'm sure a great number of these people put those bottles into recycle bins in good faith, assuming that they'd be recycled into a new bottle, and cutting down on waste. It turns out that the whole recycling industry is a giant ponzi scheme that ends with bottles being burned or—if we're lucky—buried.

      Now the real question is whether or not any government is going to do anything about it. Being able to pinpoint where the plastic is coming from is a good first step, but what

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by b0bby ( 201198 )

        If the plastics they counted were from cleanups, it's unlikely that the source was people placing them in recycling systems.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by al0ha ( 1262684 )
      The blame for this falls squarely on the government and plastics manufacturer lobbyists.

      It used to be that we returned glass bottles for a redemption. Those glass bottles were then washed, sterilized, refilled with the product and sold again. But decades ago the plastics manufacturers saw a really greedy opportunity to make $$$ and hired lobbyists and bogus scientists to convince the politicos that washing bottles was not hygienic and actually a health hazard, and that plastics was a far better choice.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dpille ( 547949 )
        You realize that in most consumer iterations, the glass bottle weighs as much as the product, right?

        Around here, bottlers began to phase out glass bottles in the early 80's- pretty much when real gas prices hit their modern all-time high. But I suppose that shouldn't stop you from arguing that a bunch of lobbyists and scientists somehow convinced the thousands of independent bottlers to abandon glass, since hired lobbyists and bogus scientists are clearly bad guys.

      • It used to be that we returned glass bottles for a redemption.

        You can do that with plastic bottles too, and then just burn them for power.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        The blame for this falls squarely on the government and plastics manufacturer lobbyists.

        It used to be that we returned glass bottles for a redemption

        I see someone who has never had a kid drop a 2-quart glass bottle on the kitchen floor. That often ends with copious blood joining the mess on the floor, and trip to urgent care for stitches.

        Glass bottles were firmly rejected by families, and plastic was greatly welcomed. Adult beverages are obviously a different matter entirely.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by marklark ( 39287 )

      More accurately, it's their customers that are the polluters.

      Well, I can't argue with that (it was my first thought, too).

      But, microplastics FEED the ocean [wattsupwiththat.com].

    • Re:more accurately (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @02:35PM (#59367342)

      Yeah, the days of personal responsibility are well over. They want to sue oil companies for global warming, despite the fact that we all use tons of oil based products every day. Nope, not our faults, it's the evil oil companies!

      They want to blame the pharmaceutical companies for the opioid crisis, despite the fact that lots of people legitimately need them, there is money to be had so why not just blame them?

      People hate Facebook because ostensibly Russia, Russia, Russsia! and muh privacy, but the fact is nobody decided between Clinton and Trump based on Facebook, the two aren't close choices to be decided by some shit you read on Facebook, and stop posting your entire life online if you value your fucking privacy so much.

      Nowadays people just want to blame whoever has the deepest pockets or whoever can be scapegoated the easiest for our collective stupidity.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by tsstahl ( 812393 )

        Give that poster some mod points...and a coke.

      • Re:more accurately (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @03:15PM (#59367542) Journal
        And your thoughts are supported by the science [sciencedirect.com]. From the linked study, which asked groups of individuals (those highly concerned about human caused climate change, those moderately concerned, and those skeptical), we find

        the “Highly Concerned” were most supportive of government climate policies, but least likely to report individual-level actions, whereas the “Skeptical” opposed policy solutions but were most likely to report engaging in individual-level pro-environmental behaviors

        Those who are "highly concerned" want someone else to solve the problem; those who are skeptical simply take care of their own output of pollution in the first place. It's easy to be "highly concerned" when it means Someone Else has to do the real work.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by robsku ( 1381635 )

        You are the one putting ALL the responsibility on consumers and NONE on the corporations that we all know play all kinds of dirty tricks. You think that pharmaceutical companies didn't do anything wrong when they pushed drugs that are only really needed for very serious pain issues for all kinds of minor pains. You think that the doctors who have been acting as (not like) drug pushers (I have nothing against allowing sale of any drugs, but I am against drug pushers) aren't to be blamed for anything - have y

        • Where did I say "all"? If the pharmaceutical companies broke any actual laws (false advertising, etc..) then they should pay for that piece of it. Doctors who over-prescribed should be held accountable for their part. More importantly, doctors who correctly prescribed but didn't properly treat their patients to properly get off of the medications should be held accountable. And people who misled their doctor to get pills should take responsibility for their own issues and for selling the drugs for profit.

          Th

      • The problem with these arguments is that both sides of it are correct. RE opioid crisis: yes, each person is individually responsible for their actions. This is a very good perspective to take when deciding how to live one's own life, and something that's very important for recovering addicts to grasp. On the other hand, purposefully over-prescribing opioids on a massive scale will inevitably create addicts. This is an iron law. I live in an area that's been hit hard by the opioid crisis, and the people he

      • Yeah, the days of personal responsibility are well over. They want to sue oil companies for global warming, despite the fact that we all use tons of oil based products every day.

        It's so that they can look like they're doing something without supporting a carbon tax. The cost of a carbon tax would be baked into products and services and paid for by the users, ultimately holding The People responsible for their actions. But we can't have that, can we?

      • I tend to agree, but there is one way where this story is relevant. If we can push the big companies toward truly biodegradeable containers, then there's a lot less policing of the consumers that has to take place in order to make sure all the plastic is properly disposed. And we can't expect a market force to correct this because there will always be people out there who say, "Well, it isn't hurting *me*, so I'm going to buy the cheap option."

      • >"Yeah, the days of personal responsibility are well over. "

        Yep. It is the fault of the gun, not the shooter- That is the current logic prevailing, because, you know, consumers are helpless victims and the corporations are big, evil entities. You can't have personal responsibility when you are a victim, and nowadays, everyone is a victim while freedom and privacy have little to no value.

    • Re:more accurately (Score:5, Informative)

      by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @02:36PM (#59367346)

      More accurately, it's their customers that are the polluters.

      More accurately, Coca Cola has been lobbying against recycling efforts [theintercept.com] since a very a long time. Worldwide.

      • Recycling doesn't help if people aren't willing to dispose of them properly in the first place. Someone who throws their bottle in a park right now, instead of walking 50 feet to a garbage can, isn't going to bring it back all the way to the store just because there's a recycling plan.

        • They will if the bottle deposit is one dollar.

          • Re:more accurately (Score:5, Informative)

            by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @03:08PM (#59367498)

            They will if the bottle deposit is one dollar.

            That is a.o. what Coca Cola has been lobbying against. See the article I linked.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            You want to force people to bring bottles back to some official facility rather than dropping them in the now-ubiquitous recycle bins? And you think that would be better? You're insane.

            • If only 5% of people are recycling, then yes the end result would be better.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by lgw ( 121541 )

                If that's the (wildly unlikely) case, then those 5% simply have no right to impose their values on the other 95%. They are simply not the aristocrats overseeing the peasants.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by robsku ( 1381635 )

          You're right, and people are responsible when they do not recycle. That in no way eliminates the corporate responsibility for the bottles that are actually returned correctly. At least here in Finland the deposit seems to be good enough that most of the plastic bottles do get recycled - even those originally thrown away by the purchaser.

      • You are totally mischaracterizing what they are against. They have fought against being blaimed and held financially responsible for the actions or lack of action by others. It's like trying to blame the nusery who sold you the tree when the tree grows up gets blown over by a hurricane and flattens your house. Once Coka Cola sells you the bottle what you do with it is your responsibility. If you throw it in a recycle bin or a trash can the responsibility moves to the recycler or the trash handler. If they s

      • >"More accurately, Coca Cola has been lobbying against recycling efforts [theintercept.com] since a very a long time. Worldwide."

        The epitome of faulty reporting/logic. Of course they are going to oppose trying to hold the bottler as responsible for litter. They aren't littering. That doesn't mean they are "lobbying against recycling efforts." It depends on how one defines "supports recycling." Two things can be true- they can support recycling but be opposed to being penalized for using plastic in t

    • The latest from Canada, only about 10% plastic that we as consumers add to recycling programs actually gets recycled: https://www.cbc.ca/news/techno... [www.cbc.ca] So, consumers in a lot of cases do their part, but government is not regulating recycling industry. It's time to just put an end to that. One solution is to ban single use plastics altogether. It seems like a drastic measure but in reality it is not. There are other ways to package and store soda beverages: glass, aluminum or cardboard. Another solution is t
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      I just discovered a place where I can get coke with real sugar and a glass bottle. I can't go back to drinking that corn syrup swill they pass off in plastic bottles anymore.

  • Simple econmic solution (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Chromal ( 56550 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @01:17PM (#59367036)
    Force the purveyors food or beverage that are packaged in single-use plastic containers to collect a deposit worth 25% of the retail price and refund the deposit when the container is redeemed for recycling. The economics will take care of the rest.
    • Then the returned plastic is shipped to cheap recyclers in China, who dump it into the Yangtze river.

    • Force the purveyors food or beverage that are packaged in single-use plastic containers to collect a deposit worth 25% of the retail price and refund the deposit when the container is redeemed for recycling. The economics will take care of the rest.

      You think millennial are going to bother taking bottles back for $0.25? They're already hiring people to go to their houses take out their trash for them.

      http://www.trashday.co/ [trashday.co]

      OTOH there's probably plenty of people who'll sift through that trash for $0.25 per bottle.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dpille ( 547949 )
        Well, you also never know where an individual's tipping point is. Myself, I can't be bothered for $.05 for a two-liter plastic bottle that has to retain its shape to be recognized by the redemption reader machine, but I still keep the aluminum cans out of the recycling for that same nickel. Of course, I also abandon that giant bag at the redemption site rather than bend over 200 times for $10, but there's always been someone working on it by the time I've left the store.

        • Well, you also never know where an individual's tipping point is. Myself, I can't be bothered for $.05 for a two-liter plastic bottle that has to retain its shape to be recognized by the redemption reader machine

          So... it needs to be more than $0.05.

          How about $1.00? It needs to be a number where almost nobody will just dump it.

          (Of course Nestle/CocaCola/PepsiCo will claim that hurts their sales and they have plenty of lobbying money to make sure it never happens, we're just waving our hands in the air...)

      • Yes there are plenty of people who'll sift through that trash for that amount. Over here we have $0.10 as redemption on all plastic and aluminium bottles and even though "the millennials" throws them everywhere the entire country is squeaky clean from said bottles and cans due to the army of homeless and migrants that collect and redeem them.

        I just hope that we one day would put a redemption fee on chewing gum and cigarette butts, then the cleanliness would be past 11.

      • Damn! When does this unicorn go IPO! Gotta get in on the "hire a private trashman" tech business? Now to figure out how AI plays a part of what they do, and if they take payment in Bitcoin...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      I wonder how much of a deposit it would take for consumers to care. I wonder if a price point can even exist that is simultaneously both high enough for consumers to care about returning the bottles and not so high that it prevents consumers from buying the product. I'm not convinced.

      When people are at home, they typically separate their recycling anyway (and never claim the deposits, because they just toss the bottles into their recycling bins). And when they aren't, they toss them into a recycling bin

      • The deposit can be quite small. You don't have bother with the average consumers, every major city have an army of homeless or poverty stricken people that would gladly patrol the streets 24x7 and collect your thrown away depositable bottles/cans. Where I live the amount is $0.10 per bottle/can and you won't find any littering bottles/cans anywhere.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by robsku ( 1381635 )

        I wonder how much of a deposit it would take for consumers to care. I wonder if a price point can even exist that is simultaneously both high enough for consumers to care about returning the bottles and not so high that it prevents consumers from buying the product. I'm not convinced.

        In Finland it seems to me most people do return empty bottles to the store for a deposit. The prices aren't big, but then again there's not really any trouble in doing so when visiting the store. What we have is:
        10c for small 0.33l glass bottless, some small blastic bottles, 0.33l aluminum cans and almost all booze bottles
        15c for 0.5l aluminum cans
        20c for 0.5l plastic bottles
        40c for 1l and larger plastic bottles
        That covers most of it.

        Note that Finns don't return bottles when their throwing their trash away,

  • But if everyone who bought Pepsi products properly recycled those containers, Pepsi would stop being a top polluter? Gotcha.

  • I've got a .5L Coca-Cola bottle on my desk right now. Let me take a few sips...

  • Misleading Title (Score:3)

    by Koby77 ( 992785 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @01:22PM (#59367056)
    What they MEANT was that the top three brands recovered from their LITTER cleanups were the before-mentioned companies. Bottling companies themselves don't actually litter or incinerate plastic. Basically, this study simply managed to discover brand preferences

    • Yep... Coca-Cola is the biggest user of plastic bottles, and Nestle Water has passed by Pepsi.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chromal ( 56550 )
      Yeah, sure. And oil companies don't emit greenhouse gasses (except when they do). And yet, they bear responsibility for putting a product out into the world with no sufficient plan to manage the consequences of its lifecycle. Pragmatically, that's not something individual consumers are ever going to do adequately if history is any guide. The solution to environmental problems posted by industrial-scale manufacturing or extraction activities needs to be top-down and factored into the product lifecycle. If it

      • Um, lots of companies emit greenhouse gasses. Even you do. Are you willing to manage the consequences of everything you use? Doubtful. But you are OK with making "the oil companies" do that, because, um, they are bad and stuff.

        • Re:Misleading Title (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Chromal ( 56550 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @02:18PM (#59367272)
          Look, the era of open-loop pollution is over. We now understand that there are costs to pollution just dumped into the atmosphere, into the water, with direct economic and environmental and public health consequences. Nobody has a right to profit based on the hidden unpaid costs of economic, environmental, or public health harm. The only rational answer is to build the cost of those harms into the lifecycle of the product, otherwise it's a wrongful deprivation of rights for profit, basically piracy writ large on a global scale.

          • Nobody has a right to profit based on the hidden unpaid costs of economic, environmental, or public health harm.

            Have you heard of Coase's Theorem [wikipedia.org]? It's a counterintuitive economic theory which says it doesn't actually matter whether Coke has a right to pollute or I have a right to clean oceans. We just need to agree who has which one and make it possible for one party to bargain for the rights of the other. If you care about arriving at solutions instead of justice, it's worth thinking about.

            Let me explain, as much as I understand. There's two ways of looking at the situation. One is the one you outline, that you and

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Chromal ( 56550 )
              Well, I just want clean oceans and I don't corporations to hatch business plans that degrade the environment at all, because Earth is nature and we're a part of nature, and we need to live sustainably in all the ways we haven't since the industrial revolution because destructive business models have been permitted to exist, but their existence is pathological and harmful to the Earth's and humanity's well-being.

      • If it can't be managed sustainably, then it shouldn't be sold.

        In that case, someone else will sell it. Possibly in another country.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Chromal ( 56550 )
          That's why you need regulation and government oversight. To govern behaviors and protect the public from harm. Global issues require global solutions, such as the Montreal Protocol's regulation of Ozone-destroying CFCs. And because of that, we see today in 2019 that the "Ozone Hole is the Smallest on Record Since Its Discovery" ( https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g... [nasa.gov] )

  • Better headline: popular products found freq in po (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dfenstrate ( 202098 ) <dfenstrate.gmail@com> on Thursday October 31, 2019 @01:25PM (#59367068)

    I suspect that Pepsi, Coke, and Nestle have 43% of the market share in countries that use rivers as trash dumps.
    But to say such a thing is verboten; it suggests responsibility lays on the shoulders of people who can only be victims in the eyes of msmash. Much safer to blame some western corporations. They're safe targets, right?

    • if we can get the 3 big producers of plastic waste to stop producing the waste in the first place (or produce bio degradable packaging) then that's a much easier fix than trying get millions of individual people to change their behavior.

      But more often than not the goal here is to avoid actually having to solve the problem by punting it down the line to individual consumers, shifting blame to them.

      I'm not accusing you of doing that per se, but the sentiment you're expressing isn't necessarily somethi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        There's no problem for which rsilvergun won't suggest totalitarianism is the answer. I wonder if I could write a bot that was indistinguishable from his output, sort of a reverse Turing test.

      • Hey... uh... who actually throws stuff in the river so it washes out to the ocean?
        Is it Coke executives?
        And why is any sort of personal responsibility so anathema to a leftist? I'm not sure you're serious at this point. You know that crying Indian campaign a couple decades ago, combined with wider availability of trash bins, reduced litter dramatically in the United States? You can get millions of people to change their behavior.
        Or do you think the people under discussion today are too stupid? That they'r

        • Or do you think the people under discussion today are too stupid?

          rsilvergun just doesnt want to take any responsibility. Never fucking has. Never fucking will.

    • There's blame to go around. Sure, people could avoid buying those drinks but if -- as you suspect -- pollution is simply going to shift to some other supplier because all the suppliers use the same plastics, there's no where for the consumer to shift. Ok, so they stop buying such drinks entirely. Fair point, but a lot of places don't have clean water (viscious cycle there!), so they buy these drinks from reputable Western countries where the FDA certifies the content. If the big companies are pushed (by reg

  • ...was surprised.

  • Coca-Cola, Nestle, and PepsiCo has (Score:3)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @01:34PM (#59367108)
    Customers who are the biggest polluters on the planet! Because the problem is individuals that are to lazy to properly dispose of items they are done with.

    Just my 2 cents ;)

  • Great use case for Thermal Depolymerization (Score:5, Informative)

    by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby@ c o m c a s t . net> on Thursday October 31, 2019 @01:39PM (#59367128)

    The thing that is irritating about this is that we have the technology to do something about this. Thermal Depolymerization breaks down plastic and turns it back into oil. It reduces plastic waste and helps reduce the need to drill for oil. The main issue is one of needing a good clean energy source to power the process, something like nuclear energy. This is a good case of something that isnâ(TM)t greenwashing and actually improves the environment.

    http://large.stanford.edu/cour... [stanford.edu]

  • my gosh - I have pounds, many pounds, of plastic blocks in tubs. And each Lego kit comes !wrapped! in plastic bags.

    I've given up and now vacuum the floor with abandon.

    Maybe this is about pollution in the environment. But I'd have to imagine Lego consume raw materials for, and generates a LOT of plastic.

    • Even the title, never mind the summary, specifies plastic pollution not products. If you think Legos on your floor are pollution then maybe you should refrain from buying them in the first place.

      • Re:What about LEGO? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by lgw ( 121541 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @03:35PM (#59367654) Journal

        You've missed the point: Pepsi doesn't produce plastic pollution any more that Lego does. The difference is in consumer behavior.

        The entire problem of plastic pollution is some combination of "can't be bothered to toss plastic in a bin" and "city pays the lowest bidder for disposal, who proceeds to dump everything at sea".

  • OK, so where does one buy their products and get to use a BYOD reusable cup or bottle?

  • When I was a kid, at my first job, I used to push glass bottle carts at the local grocery store that were returned by the customers for the deposit money (and refilling). That seemed to work well since grocery shoppers are already repeat customers and it was arguably "all natural". I assume they stopped doing that for profitability reasons. What if a "pollution tax" was enough to tip that back to glass?

  • Place a $10 per lb tax on plastic (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dallas May ( 4891515 ) on Thursday October 31, 2019 @03:03PM (#59367482)

    A $10 per lb tax on plastic wouldn't affect most people's day to day lives. But it would encourage producers to shop around for alternative packaging material.

    Plastic is not recyclable at a reasonable cost. It can be in perfect laboratory conditions, but isn't in the real world. Your soda didn't need a permanent eternal record of it's existence. Plastic shouldn't be used for single use packaging, unless it really is necessary.

  • Break Free From Plastic blames our "throwaway culture," for much of the consumer waste. They argue that this throwaway mindset is at the core of many companies' business model.

    I think we kinda need to remember how we got here. What's the alternative to single-use plastic containers? Well, it used to be glass bottles which are heavy to move around, heavy, bulky, and fragile to re-collect, and possibly a pain to clean and reuse. (Although I have fond memories from my college days where we had a Coke machine which dispensed re-used glass bottles. Coke tasted better out of a classic glass bottle. Interestingly, they developed worn bands around the bottle over time, where the bottles

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swilver ( 617741 )

      Such limited thinking. In Europe, literally everywhere, these bottles have a $0.25 deposit. People return them, they're cleaned, refilled. If you throw them out, they'll be returned by someone else (kids) for $0.25.

      How? We made it the law, companies are forced to cooperate. If your shop sells plastic bottles, you have to accept empty ones that consumers bring back.

      You won't find a plastic bottle like that anywhere, not in streets, fields, rivers or anywhere else.

      I wish they'd expand to many more types

  • BUT, Nestle is preventing plastic from flowing into the ocean by also unsafely, illegally stealing all the water from the rivers.
  • ... fire is the leading cause of fire.

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