Win Cowger, Kathryn A Willis, Sybil Bullock, Katie Conlon, Jorge Emmanuel, Lisa M Erdle, Marcus Eriksen, Trisia A Farrelly, Britta Denise Hardesty, Kristiina Kerge, Natalie Li, Yedan Li, Adam Liebman, Neil Tangri, Martin Thiel, Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, Tony R Walker, Mengjiao Wang
Brand names can be used to hold plastic companies accountable for their items found polluting the environment. We used data from a 5-year (2018-2022) worldwide (84 countries) program to identify brands found on plastic items in the environment through 1576 audit events. We found that 50% of items were unbranded, calling for mandated producer reporting. The top five brands globally were The Coca-Cola Company (11%), PepsiCo (5%), Nestlé (3%), Danone (3%), and Altria (2%), accounting for 24% of the total branded count, and 56 companies accounted for more than 50%...
April 26, 2024: Science Advances