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

More than a dozen coastal cities prohibited plastic straws this year.

Many more are pondering bans, along with the states of California and Hawaii.

Yet the No. 1 man-made contaminant in the world's oceans is the small but ubiquitous cigarette butt — and it has mostly avoided regulation.

That soon could change, if a group of committed activists has its way.

A leading tobacco industry academic, a California lawmaker and a worldwide surfing organization are among those arguing cigarette filters should be banned.

The nascent campaign hopes to be bolstered by linking activists focused on human health with those focused on the environment.

"It's pretty clear there is no health benefit from filters. They are just a marketing tool. And they make it easier for people to smoke," said Thomas Novotny, a professor of public health at San Diego State University.

"It's also a major contaminant, with all that plastic waste. It seems like a no-brainer to me that we can't continue to allow this."

A California assemblyman proposed a ban on cigarettes with filters, but couldn't get the proposal out of committee.

A New York state senator has written legislation to create a rebate for butts returned to redemption centers, though that idea also stalled. San Francisco has made the biggest inroad — a 60-cent per pack fee to raise roughly $3 million a year to help defray the cost of cleaning up discarded cigarette filters.

The most littered item in the world

Cigarette butts have now also fallen into the sights of one of the nation's biggest anti-smoking organizations, the Truth initiative.

The organization uses funds from a legal settlement between state attorneys general and tobacco companies to deliver tough messages against smoking.

The group last week used the nationally televised Video Music Awards to launch a new campaign against cigarette butts.

As in a couple of previous ads delivered via social media, the organization is going after "the most littered item in the world."

It's no wonder that cigarette butts have drawn attention.

The vast majority of the 5.6 trillion cigarettes manufactured worldwide each year come with filters made of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic that can take a decade or more to decompose.

As many as two-thirds of those filters are dumped irresponsibly each year, according to Novotny, who founded the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project.

The Ocean Conservancy has sponsored a beach cleanup every year since 1986.

For 32 consecutive years, cigarette butts have been the single most collected item on the world's beaches, with a total of more than 60 million collected over that time.

That amounts to about one-third of all collected items and more than plastic wrappers, containers, bottle caps, eating utensils and bottles, combined.

People sometimes dump that trash directly on to beaches but, more often, it washes into the oceans from countless storm drains, streams and rivers around the world.

The waste often disintegrates into microplastics easily consumed by wildlife.

Researchers have found the detritus in some 70 percent of seabirds and 30 percent of sea turtles.

Those discarded filters usually contain synthetic fibers and hundreds of chemicals used to treat tobacco, said Novotny, who is pursuing further research into what kinds of cigarette waste leech into the soil, streams, rivers and oceans. Continue reading

• Image: NBC

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

It costs a couple of cents to make, holds a thousand times its own weight, is waterproof, surprisingly durable, and 100 per cent recyclable.

After carrying your groceries home, it might hold

• feijoas off the tree,
• your togs and towel,
• dirty rugby boots, and,
• then end its life as a bin liner.

Having grown up with a ready supply of these miraculous freebies, I have mixed feelings about their imminent demise.

Even if the Government doesn't follow through on its proposed ban, the supermarkets will phase them out by the end of this year.

The big question is what will replace them

It's counter-intuitive, but plastic bags are far more energy efficient than any of the other options.

Paper's out - it causes seven times more global warming than a plastic bag reused as a bin liner.

A cotton bag would have to be used 327 times to break even with plastic, and trendy "organic" cloth bags are hopelessly inefficient.

If you're a twice-weekly shopper, you'd have to remember to bring your reusable bag on every single trip for three years straight.

If you slip up a single time and buy a new one, or break or throw one away, you're doing more harm than good.

New World gave away 2 million reusable bags over summer.

In the post-plastic era, these sort of cheap freebies will be the new normal, treated with the same casual disdain, and binned or lost long before the break-even point.

Since cloth harbours nasty gremlins such as e coli, it'll need to be washed with hot water and detergent, which blows out the environmental cost even more. In practice, most people will just toss them out when they get a bit manky-looking.

Sales of bin liners to increase

The supermarket chains can't believe their luck.

The overseas experience suggests they're about to receive a massive boost in the sale of bin liners, which they essentially gave away for free all these years, and come out of the whole thing looking like heroes, despite potentially making global warming worse.

Of course, carbon emissions aren't the only concern. Plastic takes ages to degrade compared to natural materials, and wreaks havoc on wildlife when it ends up in the sea.

Littering is the issue

While this is terrible, "single use" plastic bags only represent 0.2 per cent of the waste that goes to landfill.

Packaging material - like the trays and shrink-wrap and packets that we put in the bag - are 300 times worse.

Since plastic bags are fully recyclable these days, what we really have is an issue with littering.

If you reuse and dispose of them correctly, there's no worries.

So why have plastic bags been singled out as the devil incarnate, despite being a minuscule part of the problem? "Ban the bag" campaigners say it's low-hanging fruit that gives us an easy win.

The more cynical explanation is that it lets us feel the righteous pride of doing our bit, without having to make any real sacrifices.

There's a flaw in our psychology called "moral licensing", which makes us less inclined to behave virtuously after we've already done some token good deed.

This is how someone can pilot a two-tonne SUV from their massive home filled with stuff, emerge from the supermarket with an eco-bag full of packaging, shrink-wrapped slabs of miserable animal flesh, and plastic junk "collectables", and still see themselves as someone who cares about the environment.

After all, they've done their bit.

The truth is that eating one less meat dish a week would make vastly more of a difference.

• So would biking or walking to the supermarket.
• So would stepping off the hamster wheel of consumerism.
• So would donating money to offset carbon emissions, or to cleaning up the ocean.

These are the hard things, and no-one wants to do them.

Banning plastic bags is fiddling while Rome burns.

It's not important to make a difference, as long as you look like you're making a difference; preferably with a limited edition hemp tote that has a cute picture of a seal on it and only cost $2.

Giving the remarkable plastic bag the respect it deserves is as simple as reducing, reusing, and being a tidy Kiwi.

If you want to be truly virtuous, a meaningful lifestyle change is required.

• Richard Meadows is a journalist and the author of "Budget Buster". After saving $100,000 by age 25, he quit his full time job, sold everything he owned and moved to Asia to live out of a backpack. Deep Dish is where he documents his experiments in frugality, simple living and minimalism.
• Image: The Deep Dish