Twenty companies are responsible for producing more than half of all the single-use plastic waste in the world, fuelling the climate crisis and creating an environmental catastrophe, new research reveals.
ExxonMobil is the greatest single-use plastic waste polluter in the world, contributing 5.9m tons to the global waste mountain, concludes an analysis by the Minderoo Foundation of Australia with partners including Wood Mackenzie, the London School of Economics and Stockholm Environment Institute. The world’s largest chemical company, US-based Dow, created 5.5m tons of plastic waste, while China’s oil and gas enterprise Sinopec created 5.3m tonnes. According to the report, those companies’ plastic production is funded by leading banks, led by Barclays, HSBC, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.
Former US vice-president and environmentalist Al Gore said the ground-breaking 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 decarbonized. Big plastic polluters take advantage of minimal regulation and limited transparency in most countries.
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