THE Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) movement conducts an annual activity that involves counting and documenting the brands on plastic waste found in different locations across the globe. This "brand audit," BFFP claims, is a powerful tool for recording and tracking down the companies responsible for "polluting the planet" with plastic. Their annual report came out recently from the audit they did last September 21, 2019, on the occasion of World Clean Up Day.
The audit involved a total of 72,541 volunteers in 51countries who collected 476,423 pieces of plastic waste. Of those collected, 43% was marked with a clear consumer brand. The BFFP list of "Top Global Polluters" was determined primarily based on the number of countries where these companies' brands were found and the number of plastics collected per brand or manufacturer. Report can be viewed at breakfreefromplastic.org/globalbrandauditreport2020/.
Based on their criteria, BFFP named the following as their 2019 Top 10 Global Polluters arranged according to rank: Coca Cola, Nestle, PepsiCo, Mondelez International (makers of Cadburry, Chips Ahoy, Oreo and Tang), Unilever, Mars, P&G, Colgate-Palmolive, Phillip Morris, and Perfetti Van Melle (makers of Mentos and Chupa Chups). For the second year in a row, Coca Cola came in as their Top Global Polluter.
The BFFP is calling the companies in their list to reveal how much single-use plastic they use, set clear, public, measurable targets on how they will reduce the quantity of single-use plastic items they produce and to completely reinvent their product delivery systems in order to avoid creating more plastic pollution.
I believe that this audit is not just for manufacturers. It's a call for consumers and the government to act as well. We need to steer away from our throw-away culture. The government for its part should come up with laws that will discourage the use of single use plastics. The European Parliament for instance will ban single-use plastic items like cutlery, cotton buds, straws and stirrers by 2021. The BFFF can only make an appeal, but governments can force manufacturers to make concrete action.
Senator Cynthia Villar filed Senate Bill No. 1331 to institutionalize "Extended Producers Responsibility." It will mandate manufacturers to recover plastic wastes from their products as a mechanism towards achieving an efficient solid waste management. There are also several pending bills in both houses of Congress that seeks to ban or regulate the use of plastic products.
The biggest role will be played by consumers. What customers want, manufacturers follow. In fairness to the companies named in the report, it is the consumers who purchased the products and disposed them that are directly responsible for the plastic litter.
The three most common plastic items found during the audit were plastic bags (59,168 pcs), followed by sachets (53,369 pcs) and plastic bottles (29, 142 pcs). In the past, these wastes don't exist. People carry baskets when going to the market. Scrap papers are re-used into paper bags. Soda and beer are sold through the bottle deposit system. The Pinoy "tingi" culture was not a problem until sachets came around.