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The Street

Samanda Dorger

The Companies Responsible for the Most Single-Use Plastic Waste in the World

China Chevron Corporation Supply chain

The planet is overrun by plastic.

Over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year, half of which is used to create single-use items such as shopping bags, cups and straws.

At least 14 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year, and plastic is found on the shorelines of every continent, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Microplastics have been found in tap water, beer, salt and recently in the human bloodstream.

Plastic, a synthetic organic polymer, is made from petroleum, and just 20 companies are the source of more than half of the single-use plastics in the world.

The Plastic Waste Makers Index is a study by Australia's philanthropic Minderoo Foundation that identifies the source of the world’s single-use plastic waste. It names the 20 petrochemical companies who generate more than half the world’s single-use plastic waste, and the global financial institutions backing them.

The report aims to increase transparency along the entire plastics supply chain, beyond the brands like Coca-Cola named as the No. 1 contributor to plastic pollution globally. Polymers are the building blocks of plastic, and polymer producers are the gatekeepers of plastic production.

According to the report, the index also serves as a tool to assist the companies named to assess their single-use plastic footprint and to measure progress against their own sustainability goals, in moving from virgin fossil fuel sources to more circular models. A circular economy is one that emphasizes sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling, rather than a linear model in which resources are collected, used and thrown away.

>> See: The Countries That Produce the Most Plastic Waste

With pressure on financial institutions to move capital away from public companies that perform negatively against ESG criteria, the analysis identifies which classes of shareholders (institutional asset managers, state/ sovereign owners, private individuals/institutions) hold what value of equity in the companies producing single-use plastic, and their estimated contribution to plastic waste.

The report addresses only single-use plastics. Types of plastic included in the study are:

PET: Mostly used for food and drink packaging, including plastic bottles
HDPE: Dense and thick plastic commonly used as grocery bags, opaque milk and juice containers, shampoo bottles and medicine bottles.
LLDPE: Plastic film and sheeting
LDPE: The most-used family of plastics in the world, LDPE is used for bags (grocery, dry cleaning, bread, frozen food bags, newspapers, garbage) plastic wraps; coatings for paper milk cartons and hot & cold beverage cups; some squeezable bottles (honey, mustard), food storage containers and container lids
PP: Used for hot food containers and in disposable diapers.

These polymers represented 87%, or 115 million metric tons of total single-use plastic volumes in 2019.

According to Minderoo’s report, these are the 30 companies at the base of the supply chain responsible for the most single-use plastics, and ultimately the most plastic waste in the world. The list includes companies such as ExxonMobile (XOM), Dow (DOW), and Chevron (CVX). The most recent data is from November 2021. The contribution to single-use plastic waste factors in the efforts of these companies to reduce plastic pollution.