Five Chemical and Oil Firms Behind Alliance to End Plastic Have Produced 1,000 Times More Plastic Than They Cleaned Up, Analysis Finds

While the program has saved some 118,580 tonnes of unmanaged plastic waste since 2019, just five companies part of the alliance’s executive committee produced 132 million tonnes of plastic over the same period, according to Greenpeace.

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Members of an alliance formed to end plastic pollution, which include the world’s largest oil and gas companies, have produced more than 1,000 times the plastic than the scheme has cleaned up since its inception, a Greenpeace analysis has revealed.

Launched in 2019 by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a major plastics trade association, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste was publicized as a campaign aimed at shifting the conversation “away from short-term simplistic bans of plastic.”

Alliance members, which include Chevron Phillips Chemical, ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings, Procter & Gamble and Shell, pledged $1.5 billion in clean-up efforts primarily concerning waste collection and recycling. To date, they have provided only one-fourth of that funding, according to Greenpeace.

As shown on the alliance’s website, the program has saved some 118,580 tonnes of unmanaged plastic waste since 2019. What it does not reveal is that just five companies part of the alliance’s executive committee produced 132 million tonnes of plastic over the same period. They include chemical company Dow and Chevron Phillips and oil companies ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies.

“It’s hard to imagine a clearer example of greenwashing in this world,” the environmental campaigner Bill McKibben told Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigative journalism publication. “The oil and gas industry – which is pretty much the same thing as the plastics industry – has been at this for decades.”

Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice designed to mislead the public into believing that an organization’s products, goals, or policies are environmentally friendly and sustainable, while concealing their actual environmental impact.

More on the topic: California Sues ExxonMobil Over ‘Decades-Long’ Deceiving Plastic Recyclability Campaign

A Plastic World

For decades, plastic manufacturers have sought to hide the real impact of plastic pollution or deceiving consumers into thinking that recycling is a real and viable solution to plastic pollution.

In February, an in-depth report by the Center for Climate Integrity revealed how the plastic industry and Big Oil deceived the public for decades while contributing to the plastic waste crisis.

“Petrochemical companies – independently and through industry trade associations and front groups – have deceived consumers, policymakers, and regulators into believing that they could address the plastic waste crisis through a series of false solutions,” the report read.

Of the 400 million tons of plastic the world produces annually, only 9% is successfully recycled.

Plastics, which are primarily derived from fossil fuels, do not break down and they can take centuries to decompose, without ever really disappearing. Instead, they degrade in quality and with time break down into smaller pieces – which we commonly refer to as microplastics. 

Microplastics has been found them pretty much everywhere – inside marine creatures and in mammal feces, in food and bottled water, and even in human blood. Because this is still a relatively new research field, scientists cannot yet fully estimate the long-lasting impact of these particles on animals and humans.

Since extracting, refining and cracking fossil fuels to create plastics is an energy-intensive process, the industry is also responsible for a huge proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, plastics accounted for 1.8 gigatonnes of greenhouse gasses – nearly five times the UK’s emissions that same year. Emissions could more than double by 2060 if nothing is done to stop plastic production.

The report comes as UN negotiations for a Global Plastic Treaty are scheduled to resume in Busan, South Korea next week. Documents obtained by Unearthed show that the five alliance’s members at the center of the Greenpeace investigation have used the negotiations to push governments to abandon plastic production reduction plans.

More on the topic: Fourth Round of Negotiations Provides Limited Progress Towards a Global Plastics Treaty