Coca-Cola’s iconic bottles are internationally recognised, but Coca-Cola Europacific Partners aims to implement a more sustainable purpose for used bottles
For Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, Lucia Karina is the Public Affairs, Communication and Sustainability Director. In her role, Karina is passionate about implementing sustainable strategies, utilising green energy and working together with stakeholders to support local communities.
“We embed our sustainability initiatives into our activities,” explains Karina. “Not only for the supply chain section, but also in the commercial side. So this forward strategy consists of water management, sustainable packaging, the climate, our society and the supply chain. We are also looking at how we can reduce our sugar content in our drinks.”
The company is also working to implement a reuse or recycle policy, to minimise the volume of Coca-Cola products going to landfill.
“We are removing unnecessary and hard-to-recycle packaging. We want to make sure that 100% of our packaging actually is recyclable.”
Coca-Cola has increased the recycled content in its packaging to reduce the use of new material, including plastic made from fossil-fuels. In Indonesia, the company joined with Dynapack Asia in a joint venture and built a PET recycling facility, with a capacity for 25,000 tonnes every year.
“In Indonesia we also built the social foundation Mahija Parahita Nusantara. This is a non-profit foundation and we are trying to work to improve the lives and welfare of the waste pickers that work in these communities. We want to ensure that we increase the quality of the collection for the feedstock of the Amandina Bumi Nusantara recycling PET.”
Researchers in Indonesia have developed an innovative way to remove microplastics from water without the need for expensive filters.
It works, says Dhany Arifianto, an engineer at the Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember in Surabaya, Indonesia, by passing contaminated water through a pipe, while underwater speakers make the pipe vibrate like the sound board of a guitar.
We think of sound in terms of what we can hear. But to an engineer, it’s merely a series of pressure waves.
Normally, we think of sound in terms of what we hear. But to an engineer, it’s merely a series of pressure waves. When contaminated water passes through the pipe, the water, being liquid, simply transmits the tone. But microplastic particles, being solid, feel the pressure differently, and are driven away from it, Arifianto says.
Surround them by the same tone coming from all sides, and the only place for them to go is the centre of the pipe. When the water emerges from the pipe, this concentrated stream of plastic can then be diverted, while the rest of the water, now cleansed, flows on. “That’s basically the principle of our research,” Arifianto says, “the force created by sound.”
It’s an important development, because microplastics are a growing threat, both to humans and the environment.
Microplastics are tiny fragments of plastic, produced as larger pieces degrade. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration classifies them as anything smaller than five millimetres in length. “That’s about half the size of a fingernail clipping,” says Charles Moore, founder of Algalita Marine Research and Education, a nonprofit group in Long Beach, California, that is deeply concerned about ocean plastics.
Microplastics are a growing threat, both to humans and the environment.
Moore is a racing-boat captain who first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive concentration of plastic detritus trapped by currents, when he was sailing from Hawaii to California after a race and found himself surrounded by a sea of plastic trash.
But the big chunks of plastic Moore stumbled across aren’t the only ones polluting the seas. In the ocean, big pieces of plastic break down into smaller ones, which then break down into microplastics, and from there into even smaller bits. “Microplastics don’t stay micro,” Moore says. “They get nano.”
This map shows the location of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Credit: NOAA.
When that happens, he says, they can lodge in tissues of animals that ingest them (including people). “They don’t just pass through, they get absorbed,” he says. “They pass the blood-brain barrier; they lodge in the placenta. They get into brains and change behavior, because the brain is an electrical organ, and plastics are insulators.”
For example, he says, fish exposed to microplastics don’t go as far or spend as much time looking for food as they normally would.
They also contain xenoestrogens: chemicals that behave like artificial oestrogens. One of these is bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that is on the State of California’s official list of developmental and reproductive toxicants, based on a review of more than 300 scientific studies of its effect on the female reproductive system.
BPA can also have effects on males – enough that a recent review article in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology provocatively labeled it an “emerging threat to male fertility.”
Moore adds that it also has behavioral effects, causing male rats to hang out closer to the nest than normal, though it’s not clear if that’s because it is feminising them or simply making them anxious – a factor revealed in other studies.
“They get into brains and change behaviour, because the brain is an electrical organ, and plastics are insulators.”
Charles Moore
Arifianto’s sound-based cleanup system is still in its infancy, but in lab tests that were scheduled to be presented at the December 2021 meeting of the American Acoustical Society, in Seattle, Washington, his team was able to filter out nylon fragments to an efficiency of up to 99%, and other microplastics to an efficiency of up to 95%. Although, he told Cosmos after he was stranded in Indonesia by US COVID protocols, those results are for fresh water, which is easier to work with than seawater. For seawater, he says, his team has to date only achieved 58% efficiency.
Fifty-eight percent may not sound like a lot – and it wouldn’t be if the goal was to purify drinking water. But Arifianto’s target is more ambitious. He wants to help clean up the ocean, starting in the waters offshore from Indonesia. For that, even 50% efficiency would be an enormous benefit.
To do this, he envisions an array of sonic scrubbers deployed across the narrow straits between his country’s main islands, through which currents circulating between the Pacific and Indian oceans offer perfect locations in which to intercept a lot of microplastics, especially those originating from Indonesia.
It sounds crazy, but the straits aren’t all that wide (the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, for example, is only 24 kilometres across at its narrowest point). And plastics float, meaning that the vast majority of them will be in the top five metres of the water column. To collect them, Arifianto envisions an array of sonic pipes stretching across the straits (except for the shipping channels), moored to the bottom so they stay in place and powered by solar cells, wave energy, or perhaps even the temperature gradient from the top to the bottom of their cables. “There is research [on that] in Japan,” he says of the third option.
Arifianto’s target is more ambitious. He wants to help clean up the ocean.
The big problem (other than cost), is likely to be noise pollution. “We are generating audible sound,” he says, “so marine life is going to be affected.”
How badly, he doesn’t know, but the sonic level used in his lab experiments is around 50–60 decibels, which is somewhere between the level of a quiet conversation at home and the buzz of conversation in a busy office. Either way, he says, it’s enough to be “quite audible” and “noticeable at quite a distance”. Figuring out how to deal with that will be a priority in future research.
Moore is skeptical of the idea of trying to clean up the ocean. “It’s just not possible,” he says.
What’s ultimately needed, he believes, is to rethink our use of plastics and become “plastic smart”. Or, as his organisation’s website puts it in a banner headline: “First, we change our relationship with plastic. Then, we change the world.”
Algalita members protesting against ocean plastic pollution. Credit: Algalita.
Arifianto wouldn’t disagree. “I hope I can spread the message that first, we have to stop dumping plastic on the water, whether it’s fresh water or seawater,” he says. “Because it’s going to come back to us in a very harmful way.”
But that doesn’t mean cleanup is useless. “Our work is inspired by the Clean Ocean Project, which put a net in the Pacific to catch ocean garbage.” That was a great idea, he says, but nets can only catch big chunks of plastic. “[So, we thought] how about microplastics?”
Ultimately, Arifianto says, microplastic pollution is a global problem, requiring international efforts. “I hope [our work] is going to reach more people to be aware of the problem and hopefully participate in this global action to clean up.”
Originally published by Cosmos as Sonic cleanup: using sound to capture ocean microplastics
A new web monitoring platform aims to achieve full traceability in palm oil supply chains and help companies to meet their zero-deforestation commitments — a goal that continues to elude the industry due to numerous challenges.
Palm oil is a major driver of deforestation in the two countries that produce nearly 90 per cent of the global supply, Indonesia and Malaysia, and whose forests are home to key biodiversity areas.
A 2019 study shows that land clearing for oil palm plantations was the single largest driver of deforestation in Indonesia between 2001 and 2016, accounting for 23 per cent of total deforestation.
One of the keys in stopping oil palm-driven deforestation is the ability to trace the palm oil product back to its origin, making sure that it’s legally sourced and produced from an environmental and social conflict-free area. Known as full traceability, this is a degree of transparency that the industry still hasn’t been able to achieve, despite the efforts of bodies like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
“The goal is to make Palmoil.io a self-sustaining and reliable resource for palm oil professionals to identify and mitigate risks in their supply chain,” Leo Bottrill, CEO and founder of MapHubs, told Mongabay.
Monitoring palm oil supply chains has long been challenging due to their complexity. A ton of palm oil derivative like stearic acid, for instance, used widely in detergents and cosmetics, is likely to consist of palm oil from hundreds of mills that, in turn, process palm fruit grown by thousands of plantations.
These webs of plantations and mills make it difficult for companies to fully know where they source from, right down to the plantation level, and thus to provide evidence of compliance. This also makes companies interdependent on each other for ensuring transparency.
So even if efforts have been made to monitor palm oil supply chains, they remain fragmented, expensive, and uneven, according to Bottrill. And without full traceability, a buying company can’t truly know if its palm oil is deforestation-free or not, even if it has made efforts to establish this, such as by publishing a list of the mills it buys from.
“Just because you publish a mill list, purchase RSPO-certified palm oil, and maintain a grievance tracker, doesn’t automatically mean you get a good rating,” Bottrill said. “There is still work to be done.”
Palmoil.io aims to rectify this by being the first monitoring system that reflect the reality of shared supply chains in the industry. To do that, the platform collects various data, including mapping data such as concession boundaries and mill locations, supply chain information from public mill lists, land classification maps, reliable and free forest alert technology, and widely available satellite imagery.
Palmoil.io analyses more than 2,000 palm mills, 480 refineries and crushers, and 400 high-risk plantations. It also screens all major palm oil traders, buyers and suppliers.
By analysing such a large number of mills and identifying forest loss within a 25-kilometer (16-mile) radius of mills, Palmoil.io is able to identify not only whether deforestation has occurred or not, but also what and who caused it.
“We rate each mill on both the amount of recent deforestation as well as historical deforestation and future risk,” Bottrill said.
Besides deforestation, Palmoil.io also tracks mills and suppliers associated with human rights and labor violations, by building a common grievance database featuring more than 1,400 grievances that are updated monthly. Having this database means individual companies don’t have to maintain their own grievance trackers.
With all this data, Palmoil.io can identify high-risk mills and inform subscribers to the platform not only about their exposure to the mills, but also about other companies that buy from the same mills. As a result, companies that share the same exposure to high-risk mills can work together to address the issues — essentially, buyers putting pressure on their common vendors.
“Palmoil.io shows where you need to improve, and perhaps most importantly, allows you to compare your performance with your peers,” Bottrill said. “Peer pressure might be the most powerful tool we have to achieve this zero-deforestation goal.”
Since its launch earlier this year, Palmoil.io has been used by major traders and buyers like Golden Agri Resources (GAR), Pacific Interlink, Olam and BASF.
In April, Palmoil.io notified major traders and buyers that subscribe to the platform that they’re exposed to deforestation as they’re buying from high-risk mills in Peninsular Malaysia, before the deforestation risks had been widely reported.
Bottrill said the Palmoil.io team would continue updating and improving the platform by adding more mills into the database. An upcoming feature will be plantation ratings.
“Similar to mills, this will be a list of concessions that will be rated for recent, historical and future deforestation risk,” Bottrill said. “We will also identify buyers and the grievances associated with that concession and group owner.”
MapHubs is also developing an experimental approach to analysing deforestation risk from smallholders, since very few of them have been mapped despite accounting for 40 per cent of all palm oil production.
“Despite the many challenges, I’m optimistic palm oil could be the first major deforestation-causing commodity to move definitively towards a deforestation-free mode of production,” Bottrill said. “Palmoil.io’s job is to help accelerate the ‘could.’”
But for palm oil to be truly deforestation free, he added, it’s important for all stakeholders to be involved.
“This is not about delivering a sustainable supply chain for one particular company or market. This is about everyone,” Bottrill said. “There can’t be a sustainable market and a leakage market — there can only be one market. So whether you are selling Snickers bars to Slovenians or cooking oil to Indians, sustainability must become an industry standard, not some voluntary luxury. We want Palmoil.io to play an important role towards achieving this.”
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
Straddling the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire, Indonesia is one of the most geologically active countries in the world, with churning molten rock beneath the archipelago triggering about 1,000 tremors a month. The heat generated by movement in the Earth’s bowels can be harnessed. Where water seeps into the ground, it warms up, creating energy that can power homes and industry if you drill deep enough.
In 1904, Italian scientist Piero Ginori Conti became the first person to use this type of energy to power several light bulbs. More than a century later, geothermal power has become an important source of renewable electricity from the United States to the Philippines, but Indonesia wants to rise above them all.
Home to 40 per cent of the world’s geothermal resources, Indonesia’s government has identified more than 300 sites with an estimated 24 GW in geothermal energy reserves—the world’s largest—across islands including Sumatra, Java, Nusa Tenggara, Sulawesi and Maluku. Most of this remains untapped. Three years ago, it overtook the Philippines to become the second-largest geothermal power producer globally. Now, it only tails the United States, which has a capacity of 2.6 GW.
Geothermal plants use steam from underground reservoirs of hot water to spin a turbine, which drives a generator to produce electricity. An inexhaustible source of heat, geothermal is relatively clean and does not emit carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases, doesn’t produce a lot of waste or make a large footprint on land. Unaffected by the whims of nature, geothermal can generate a stable baseload power around the clock to complement more variable output from other green sources, including wind and solar.
Geothermal power capacity in Indonesia, the Philippines, and the United States, 2011 – 2020. The US is the biggest geothermal power producer globally, followed by Indonesia and the Philippines. Source: IRENA
Increasing domestic capacity will also help Indonesia cushion itself from the risks associated with its dependence on fossil fuel imports and associated price fluctuations while reducing fossil fuel subsidies, which gobble Rupiah 70.5 trillion (US$4.9 billion) a year.
Indonesia’s idea to draw energy from the bowels of the Earth goes back to the Dutch colonial era. Trial well drilling began at Java’s Kamojang crater as early as 1926, although it would take several more decades until the first generator was installed to produce electricity. By the mid-1980s, several geothermal plants were in operation and explorations on other islands were underway. In 2018, a consortium of Japanese and Indonesian firms completed the US$1.17 billion Sarulla project in North Sumatra, the world’s biggest geothermal power plant at the time with a capacity of 330 megawatts, enough to power 330,000 homes.
As of 2020, Indonesia had 19 existing geothermal working areas and 45 new working areas, while 14 areas had been earmarked for preliminary surveys and exploration, according to government data. A total of 16 geothermal power plants have been built.
A worker at Indonesia’s first geothermal field, Kawah Kamojang, in 1935. Image: Christoffel Hendrik Japing, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia Commons
Investors stay away
Despite the sheer scale of its potential, the sector has experienced setbacks. The government’s plans for the industry largely hinge on private money, but major policy uncertainties and the government’s adverse pricing regime for renewables continue to deter investors and drive up costs, making geothermal projects less viable.
Due to this poor investment climate, the energy and mineral resources ministry conceded last year, progress on its ambition to install 7.2 GW of geothermal capacity by 2025, a target enshrined in its electricity procurement plan (RUPTL), will bedelayed by five years. It is estimated that Indonesia will require US$15 billion in investment to meet this goal.
If Indonesia doesn’t develop a clearer framework, the sector will find it difficult to thrive.
Septia Buntara Supendi, manager, sustainable energy and energy efficiency, Asean Centre for Energy
The list of market restraints is long. Two key obstacles are the lack of favourable rates for the power that developers feed into the grid and the high upfront risks facing firms in the exploration stage. Drilling wells can be a gamble because companies never know exactly how big a geothermal reserve they will find. This clouds the economics of geothermal ventures.
“Pricing has been a problem for renewable energy in Indonesia, especially for geothermal energy, because the development costs are very high,” Florian Kitt, a Jakarta-based energy specialist at the Asian Development Bank told Eco-Business.
Complicating matters further is that geothermal resources are often found in remote areas, further increasing costs. The government will need to throw other renewables into the mix to achieve least-cost electricity generation, Kitt said.
“The government wants to be a world leader in geothermal energy, and it will eventually be, but right now it makes more sense to look at how to best diversify and green Indonesia’s energy supply to meet demand at least cost. Key is an affordable mix of geothermal, solar, wind, hydro, biomass, and other renewable energy sources,” he said.
Indonesia also hasn’t laid the necessary groundwork to draw investment. From inadequate grid management and cumbersome negotiation practices to poorly designed power purchase agreements, there are myriad barriers the nation needs to tackle, according to an ADB report released last year.
While the adoption of international best practices for planning, procurement, contracting and risk mitigation will likely bring down clean energy costs, the government has not adequately “taken into account the dependency of renewable energy costs on the broader regulatory and commercial environment”, according to the bank.
A recent report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, an independent Canadian think tank, showed that out of the 75 power purchase agreements that clean energy firms had signed with government-owned utility company Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) between 2017 and 2018, 36 per cent had not reached financial closing, and nearly 7 per cent had been terminated.
New hope
To plug the industry’s funding gap, the government has backed research on small-scale geothermal plants that come with smaller investment needs and risks compared to bigger facilities. The state also provides tax incentives and has streamlined previously tedious permit processes. In remote areas, it has engaged communities to improve public acceptance of geothermal development. Local opposition to geothermal plants has hamstrung projects in the past.
The government’s focus on de-risking geothermal exploration to incentivise private investment has been an important step towards increasing geothermal development, according to Kitt.
But a presidential regulation announced last year that is predicted to revitalise the renewables sector remains stuck in limbo. While a draft is on the table, the different ministries are still debating the budgetary impacts of the scheme as the Covid-19 pandemic continues wreaking havoc on the economy, soaking up government resources.
The regulation is meant to fix the pricing mechanism for geothermal power and mitigate early development risks through fiscal incentives and state-funded well drilling. Under the scheme, energy planners have also proposed a subsidy to close the gap between the geothermal power tariffs and PLN’s basic cost of electricity, a policy previously recommended by the ADB to encourage the state utility to buy more clean energy. At present, caps on PLN’s retail prices act as a strong disincentive for the firm to purchase anything but the lowest-cost electricity, which is typically coal-fired.
“There are massive opportunities in geothermal energy. The sector will be critical for Indonesia to achieve its sustainable energy ambitions,” said Septia Buntara Supendi, manager for sustainable energy and energy efficiency at the Asean Centre for Energy, a think tank based in Jakarta. “But if Indonesia doesn’t develop a clearer framework, the sector will find it difficult to thrive.”
Green groups have long criticised the Jawa 9 & 10 coal power project over its devastating impacts on public health and the environment. Now, a study has revealed the project would also be unprofitable for its investors.
The 2,000-megawatt Jawa 9 & 10 coal-fired power project planned to be built near the Indonesian capital city Jakarta would result in significant losses for investors if it goes through, a new pre-feasibility study released on Thursday (18 June) has revealed.
The analysis conducted by Korea Development Institute (KDI), an autonomous policy-oriented research organisation, shows the present value of cash flows pumped into the power project would exceed that of inbound cash flows by US$43.58 million over the station’s lifetime.
Almost three-quarters of the project volume is financed through loans provided by lenders such as Singapore bank DBS, Siemens Bank, Korean public banks, as well as Malaysian and Indonesian banks, which include Maybank, CIMB, Bank Negara Indonesia, Exim Bank of Indonesia and Bank Mandiri, among others.
However, South Korean utility Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) is the only foreign firm backing the project that will hold a share of ownership in the plant. It is poised to lose US$7.08 million in equity investments, according to the study, which was obtained by Seoul-based non-profit Solutions for our Climate.
Other equity investors associated with the venture include Jakarta-based power and petrochemical firm Barito Pacific and Indonesia Power, a subsidiary of Indonesia’s state utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), which provides the land for the station.
Solutions for our Climate director Youn Sejong said while loan investors were less at risk because their investment would be paid off first, the fact that the project itself was valued negative should still be a wakeup call for the banks supporting it.
“Investors backing the project should pull out given the estimated unprofitability. Because the construction has not commenced, this is the best time to withdraw from the project with no sunk cost involved,” he told Eco-Business.
The project, which is to add two power plant units to the Suralaya coal-fired power station in Cilegon, a city in Indonesia’s Banten province, is expected to be in operation from 2024. The new plant units will use ultra-supercritical technology to enable higher efficiencies and lower emissions.
Besides the Jawa project, Kepco is planning to acquire a share in the planned Vung Ang 2 project in Ha Tinh province, Vietnam. Its stake in the venture would see the company build two 600-megawatt coal plants carrying a price tag of US$2.24 billion.
This is despite a recent estimate by the KDI that the net value of the Vung Ang 2 project stands at negative $158 million, with Kepco’s planned investment valued at negative $80 million.
Around the globe, pressure is mounting on governments and companies to drop coal, the world’s single-biggest contributor to man-made global warming, amid increasingly dire warnings of climate change.
Both the Jawa and the Vung Ang ventures have received heavy criticism from environmental activists and health experts in recent years, who have urged the corporations backing them to recognise the reputational, legal and environmental risks involved in the investments.
A 2019 report by environmental campaigners Greenpeace that modelled the health impacts of the Jawa project concluded the station would cause 4,700 premature deaths over its lifetime.
The new assessment comes as the Korean government puts together its Green New Deal package, a collection of sweeping policies geared towards ending South Korea’s contribution to climate change. The move was announced as part of the Liberal Party of Korea’s election manifesto earlier this year.
Following Moon Jae-in’s recent landslide victory, the government is expected to implement a carbon tax, foster investment in clean energy, and phase out domestic as well as overseas coal power financing.
Last month, the world’s top asset manager BlackRock, which owns shares in Kepco, raised concerns over several coal projects the utility firm is involved in.
According to the KDI, Kepco’s financial plan for the Jawa project takes an overly optimistic view of the expected amount of power sales and potential power transmission rates.
The firm has also likely underestimated engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) costs and not taken into account the financial difficulties currently facing Korean company Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction, the venture’s EPC contractor, amid the coronavirus crisis.
This increases the risk of budget overruns and project delays, although they would only indirectly affect Kepco as the EPC contractor would be required to bear the added costs.
The KDI pointed out the global transition to renewables indicated coal’s decline and could entail negative consequences for the Jawa power plant units.
At the same time, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has yet to peak in Indonesia, may affect the project as it wreaks havoc on supply chains and project timelines while reducing electricity consumption. Youn said: “Planning of the Jawa 9 & 10 project was based on a gross overestimation of power demand growth.”
“Kepco should consider participating in the project only after closely examining the particular economic and market conditions in Indonesia,” reads the KDI’s report.
Despite the bleak profitability outlook, however, Kepco pursues its investment plans and seeks to obtain its board’sapproval on the investment in the next board meeting scheduled for the end of June, according to Solutions for our Climate.
Earlier this month, the company announced through the media that the project passed the new pre-feasibility study, although the project score indicated that investments should be “considered with caution”, said the non-profit in a statement released on Thursday (18 June). In total, the firm looks to commit US$51 million to the Jawa venture.
In its statement, Solutions for our Climate said: “Kepco’s hasty decision to invest in the Jawa 9 & 10 project is likely to undermine the Korean government’s initiative towards a clean energy transition and sustainable economy.”
The same firms have topped the global plastic polluter audit, conducted by a collective of environmental groups running cleanup operations, for the second year in succession.
This is despite initiatives the multi-national consumer goods companies have launched to address the chronic plastic pollution problem they have contributed to.
Coke uses PlantBottle packaging, which are bottles made from plants, saves the equivalent annual emissions of more than 315,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, Coke estimates. Image: Coca-Cola
But these measures do not address the root of the problem – the overuse of plastic by consumer goods firms – and so have not affected their standing in the global litter audit, the campaigners noted.
“Commitments by corporations like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo to address the crisis unfortunately continue to rely on false solutions like replacing plastic with paper or bioplastics and relying more heavily on a broken global recycling system,” said Abigail Aguilar, plastic campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, the lead group for the Break Free From Plastic campaign, in a media briefing on Wednesday.
“We call them false solutions because they perpetuate the throwaway culture that caused the plastic pollution crisis, and will do nothing to prevent these brands from being named the top polluters again in the future.”
As part of Break Free From Plastic, a global movement of non-governmental organisations advocating against new plastic production, Greenpeace orchestrated 4,384 cleanups in over 50 countries from August 1 to September 30, picking up 476,423 pieces of plastic. Almost half of the plastic waste was marked with a clear consumer brand.
Other companies identified in the study included Mondelez International, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Philip Morris International and Perfetti van Melle.
The world’s top 10 biggest plastic polluters in 2019. Image: Break Free From Plastic.
Von Hernandez, global coordinator of Break Free from Plastic, called on corporations to reduce their production of single-use plastic, instead of using recycling or recyclable packaging as a solution.
He cited a 2017 study that found that 8.3 billion metric tonnes of plastic trash have been produced since 1950, but only 9 per cent of it has been recycled globally.
“Even if all plastic packaging were collected to be recycled, it would only be down-cycled or transformed into another inferior product that inevitably becomes waste, ending up in incinerators and landfill, polluting our oceans,” Hernandez said.
“Over the next 30 years, the amount of plastic waste is set to quadruple,” he warned.
A call for ‘alternative delivery systems’
Environmentalists urged the consumer goods companies to invest in different ways to package their products that do not create pollution.
Unilever’s hair refilling station in a mall at the Makati Central Business District in the Philippines.
Image: Unilever
Unilever, which ranked as the fifth largest polluter in the audit, launched a shampoo and conditioner refilling station in three high-traffic malls in Metro Manila, Philippines in March.
The hair and skincare giant, which owns brands such as Dove, Sunsilk, and Lux, sells many of its products in single-use plastic sachets in developing countries like the Philippines and Indonesia to make its products more affordable.
While environmentalists lauded Unilever’s intiative, they said consumers in the lower income bracket who mostly use single-use sachets will not use the refilling stations.
“It’s a step in the right direction, but malls especially in the central business district are not that accessible to the common Filipino. In our dialogue with the companies, we told them that if they are to invest and introduce an alternative [to plastics], they need to position them where they are easily accesible, like in sari-sari (retail) stores or public markets,” Aguilar said.
“Solutions must be affordable, simple, convenient, durable, and non-toxic,” he said.
