Monday, March 18, 2024

These 5 companies were named the top plastic polluters in Canada (REPORT)

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For the second year in a row, Nestlé and Tim Hortons have been named the top two plastic polluters in Canada.

Greenpeace Canada has just released its list of top 5 plastic polluters for 2019 and four out of the five companies are the same as last year.

They are:

  • Nestlé
  • Tim Hortons
  • Starbucks
  • McDonald’s
  • The Coca-Cola Company

The only new addition to the list is Starbucks, which knocked out PepsiCo. from the same spot in 2018.

“Canada’s top plastic polluters are once again the usual suspects. Polluters like Nestlé and Tim Hortons are continuing to shift responsibility on consumers, instead of fixing their own broken business models,” said Sarah King, Head of Greenpeace Canada’s Oceans and Plastics Campaign.

“Companies’ responsibility doesn’t end at the point of sale. It’s time these polluters got honest with their customers about the scale of their plastics problem and made a real commitment to solve it through ditching disposables and embracing reuse.”

See also: These 5 companies produce almost half of all plastic pollution in Canada

To compile this list, Greenpeace Canada conducted an audit of branded plastic pollution collected at the Canadian locations and were able to identify 240 companies.

Of these identifiable plastics, 39% belonged to the top five polluters with Nestlé making up 12% and Tim Hortons accounting for around 11% of the pollution.

Other brands like Sobeys, Costco, Walmart and Loblaw were also found in the audit.

The five most commonly collected single-use plastic items were cigarette butts, bottles and caps, wrappers, cups and lids, and straws.

See also: Canadian government to ban all single-use plastics by 2021

“Shoreline and community cleanups expose companies’ inaction and their failed attempt at green-washing,” added King.

“We’ve collected everything from bioplastics to paper straws and recyclable lids and bottles, but it’s all still trashing our planet. Replacing single-use plastics with other single-use alternatives is a false solution that perpetuates our broken, disposal-centric business models.”

To conclude, Greenpeace Canada calls for a nationwide ban on the single-use plastics that are regularly found in the environment.

Earlier this year, the Canadian federal government announced a ban on all single-use plastic products and packaging including shopping bags, straws, cutlery, plates, and stir sticks, to be implemented as early as 2021.

However there is currently no information on how this ban will be implemented, or whether it will look different for each province and territory.

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Brishti Basu
Former Senior Staff Writer and Content Manager at Victoria Buzz.

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