It identifies the Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, and Nestl\u00e9 as the world’s worst-known brand plastic polluters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Plastic production worldwide has increased by over 100% since 2000, reaching around 400 million metric tonnes annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In South Africa, approximately 2.4 million metric tonnes of plastic waste is generated annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This surge in production has resulted in a corresponding increase in plastic waste, which can now be found in virtually every part of the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As such, researchers wanted to attempt to quantify and locate the sources of pollution whilst providing viable alternatives to counter this scourge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“One of the main challenges of addressing plastic pollution is identifying where the plastic products come from and who produced them,” said the researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Ocean-plastic-pollution.jpg\")
<\/a>The study<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The international team of over 100,000 volunteers conducted a five-year study across 84 countries (including South Africa) and six continents, collecting and surveying more than 1.87 million items of plastic waste<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unbranded plastic items comprised 52% of the total mean. The paper noted that “assigning company ownership to these unbranded plastic items is not possible with current techniques.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Without evidence for the producer identity of unbranded plastic, we focus the following investigation on branded plastic,” said the researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The top 10 brands pinpointed for the most amount of branded plastic pollution globally were:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thirteen companies were found to have an individual contribution of 1% or more of the total branded plastic observed in the audit events.<\/p>\n\n\n The bulk of the rubbish collected from these companies is single-use packaging for food, beverage, and tobacco products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “56 companies were responsible for greater than 50% of the branded plastic, and 19,586 companies were responsible for all of the branded plastic,” it said in the paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It is important to note that the contributions of the top companies may be an underestimation because there were brands that were not attributed to a company, and there were many unbranded objects,” it added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Brand names can be used to hold plastic companies accountable for their items found polluting the environment,” said the researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n According to the study, the prevalence of food and beverage companies, particularly those that specialise in single-use plastic products, above the trendline in\u00a0the below image and retail and household goods companies below the line suggests that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Top-plastic-pollutors-1024x436.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Companies-and-branded-plastic-pollution-1000x1024.jpg\")
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/cms\/10.1126\/sciadv.adj8275\/asset\/aadfaddb-0fec-4623-9917-9ba0bb6453a7\/assets\/images\/large\/sciadv.adj8275-f5.jpg\")