Research examines big company progress on plastic packaging waste

All of the attention and pressure that have been brought to bear on plastics packaging in recent years have led to a flood of environmental and sustainability goals.

But just how are companies, both individually and overall, advancing toward these ambitions?

Many firms in recent years have set goals tied to 2025 and, sometimes, 2030. As 2021 turns into 2022, the time frame for achieving the 2025 ambitions grows shorter day by day.

But there's still time, and that's a good thing, because the research shows there remains plenty of heavy lifting.

Ubuntoo, which works with firms to help them achieve their environmental goals, wanted to take a look at large companies, their efforts at sustainability and progress to date. The firm operates what it calls a global environmental solutions online platform that can connect companies with sustainability solutions and experts. Ubuntoo likens it to a matchmaker service of sorts.

Ubuntoo worked with Brandscapes Worldwide, a data analytics firm, to create the first ever "Plastic Promises" report measuring both ambition and action toward reducing plastic packaging waste.

Ubuntoo looked at 176 global companies in 17 industries to develop scores in four categories: commitment to reduce virgin plastic use, use of recycled content, packaging recyclability and recovery/collection goals.

"A lot has been written about the problem of plastic pollution and its impact on the environment. Often, large consumer product companies or plastics producers are portrayed as the leading cause of the problem," Venkatesh Kini, co-founder of Ubuntoo, said in an email interview.

"The Plastic Promises report is unique because it focuses on the progress by companies to solve the problem. It quantifies the ambitions of companies using a transparent and objective scoring methodology, benchmarks goals across industries and shows which companies are leading the way," he said.

Of all the companies analyzed by Ubuntoo and Brandscapes, just 7 percent ranked as "sustainability leaders" by the firm when considering actions vs. ambitions. That leaves 83 percent that "have modest goals and low action scores," 6 percent with "aggressive goals but actions are not keeping pace," and 4 percent with "strong action scores, but on fewer or more modest goals," the report states.

"To be fair, many companies are only in the first or second year of their commitment, so overall ambition scores outweighed action scores. Companies that scored high appear to have multipronged approaches to reducing their plastic packaging footprints and are not afraid to pilot new programs or ideas. While many companies want to achieve their goals, they may not yet have a road map for how to get there," Ubuntoo Operations Manager Haley Randolph said in an email interview.

"In large corporations, change is difficult. To achieve some of the goals put forth by these companies, new business models will have to be adopted, supply chains will have to adapt, and product delivery will have to be reimagined. These changes can't happen overnight, but we would hope to see the needle moving quicker than it has been," she continued.

Researchers gleaned information from publicly available sources, including annual reports, sustainability reports, news releases and company websites, Randolph explained.

"To create the scoring methodology, we spent months creating a system that weighed goals fairly based on the company's starting baseline, their intended target, and their timeline," Randolph said. Ambitions, actions and progress were all considered in calculating an overall score.

Ubuntoo only examined companies with at least $1 billion in sales as their scale means they are both "major contributors to the plastics issue" and "can also be leaders of sustainable change," she said.

Research showed 30 of 95 companies characterized by Ubuntoo as "high plastics users" did not have plastic sustainability goals.

"Almost a third of companies classified as high plastic users haven't set plastic sustainability goals, and unfortunately most of these are headquartered in North America. These companies have the scale and the manpower to create more sustainable, circular plastic packaging systems, but had not made any public commitments to address plastic waste during our survey," Randolph said.

The new report also shows that companies in North America companies scored lower, on average, compared with those elsewhere.

"One thing we did not expect was that companies headquartered in the rest of the world scored on average two times those in North America," Kini said.

Data also showed that demand for post-consumer recycled resin, especially for food and cosmetic applications, will challenge suppliers in the years ahead, Randolph said.

Research indicated just three of the top 10 companies ranked in terms of plastic sustainability are based in North America: No. 5 Mars Inc., No. 6 PepsiCo Inc., and No. 7 S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. The list is topped by Kesko Corp., a Finnish retailer, L'Oreal SA and Unilever plc.

The report, $500 for individual use and $2,500 for company-wide use, is available at https://ubuntoo.onfastspring.com/.