Just 20 companies are the source of more than half of all the single-use plastic items thrown away globally. Plastic bottles, food packages and bags are among billions of items that are used once and then thrown away, often ending up in the oceans. The research – carried out by a consortium including the London School of Economics – looked at which companies are at the base of the plastic supply chain and make polymers, the building blocks of all plastics. It names 20 petrochemical companies which it says are the source of 55 per cent of the world’s single-use plastic waste. The companies include ExxonMobil, Dow and Sinopec. The UK comes in fourth, with more than 40kg of plastic waste generated per person per year, the authors state, while Australia is top and the United States second.
US-based ExxonMobil is the biggest producer of single-use plastic, the report says, followed by: Dow, Sinopec, Indorama Ventures, Saudi Aramco, PetroChina, LyondellBasell, Reliance Industries, Braskem, Alpek SA de CV, Borealis, Lotte Chemical, INEOS, Total, Jiangsu Hailun Petrochemical, Far Eastern New Century, Formosa Plastics Corporation, China Energy Investment Group, PTT and China Resources.
— source bbc.com | 18 May 2021