Corporate greenwash. Who are the Traitors? Who are the Faithful?

For a long time, the fossil fuel industry has been pushing the narrative that it is the fault of consumers that there is so much plastic pollution. 

They have said that the public is not recycling enough. 

They blame developing countries for the pollution that ends up in the sea. 

With the fall in revenue from fossil energy, the industry ramped up plastic production to mitigate its losses and focused on single use products to maximise turnover. 

They turned a blind eye to what happens after use and externalised the costs of cleaning up the mess they caused. 

The result has been an exponential rise in global plastic pollution, including  11 million tonnes of plastic entering the ocean every year. 

The only way for this to change is for the production and use of plastics to be reduced. This means that the industry, Big Plastic, must be prepared to at last pay their share, taking a hit on its profits. 

There may be a few who are prepared to accept this because they see the damage that is being done, but a large proportion resist all attempts to limit production and hide their agenda behind a façade of sustainable ambition. 

Like the Traitors in the television series, they lie to those around them while pretending to be Faithful to a circular economy.

In a survey of brands littering coastlines worldwide the following were the top five  polluters: The Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé, Unilever, PepsiCo and Mondelēz International.

Time will tell whether governments will see through the artifice and banish single use plastic. 

Meanwhile Coca-Cola is up next in our series ‘Corporates Making Profit from Pollution’. 

Follow our newsletter and blogs to discover more Traitors. 

+++++++++++++++++

For more information contact: info@scarabtrust.org.uk

Image

man and girl with globe covered eyes - Image by ArtHouse Studio (ST ref: 1323)

World without Waste: Facebook

chart: The World in Data