Plastic Waste Makers index identifies those driving climate crisis with virgin polymer production

Twenty companies are responsible for producing more than half of all the single-use plastic waste in the world, fuelling the climate crisis and creating an environmental catastrophe, new research reveals.

Among the global businesses responsible for 55% of the world’s plastic packaging waste are both state-owned and multinational corporations, including oil and gas giants and chemical companies, according to a comprehensive new analysis.

The Plastic Waste Makers index reveals for the first time the companies who produce the polymers that become throwaway plastic items, from face masks to plastic bags and bottles, which at the end of their short life pollute the oceans or are burned or thrown into landfill.

It also reveals Australia leads a list of countries for generating the most single-use plastic waste on a per capita basis, ahead of the United States, South Korea and Britain.

ExxonMobil is the greatest single-use plastic waste polluter in the world, contributing 5.9m tonnes to the global waste mountain, concludes the analysis by the Minderoo Foundation of Australia with partners including Wood Mackenzie, the London School of Economics and Stockholm Environment Institute. The largest chemicals company in the world, Dow, which is based in the US, created 5.5m tonnes of plastic waste, while China’s oil and gas enterprise, Sinopec, created 5.3m tonnes.

Eleven of the companies are based in Asia, four in Europe, three in North America, one in Latin America, and one in the Middle East. Their plastic production is funded by leading banks, chief among which are Barclays, HSBC, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.

The enormous plastic waste footprint of the top 20 global companies amounts to more than half of the 130m metric tonnes of single-use plastic thrown away in 2019, the analysis says.

Single-use plastics are made almost exclusively from fossil fuels, driving the climate crisis, and because they are some of the hardest items to recycle, they end up creating global waste mountains. Just 10%-15% of single-use plastic is recycled globally each year.

The analysis provides an unprecedented glimpse into the small number of petrochemicals companies, and their financial backers, which generate almost all single-use plastic waste across the world.

Al Gore, the environmentalist and former US vice-president, said the groundbreaking analysis exposed how fossil fuel companies were rushing to switch to plastic production as two of their main markets – transport and electricity generation – were being decarbonised.

“Since most plastic is made from oil and gas – especially fracked gas – the production and consumption of plastic are becoming a significant driver of the climate crisis,” said Gore.

“Moreover, the plastic waste that results – particularly from single-use plastics – is piling up in landfills, along roadsides, and in rivers that carry vast amounts into the ocean.”

The plastic waste crisis grows every year. In the next five years, global capacity to produce virgin polymers for single-use plastics could grow by more than 30%.

By 2050 plastic is expected to account for 5%-10% of greenhouse gas emissions.

“An environmental catastrophe beckons: much of the resulting single-use plastic waste will end up as pollution in developing countries with poor waste management systems,” the report’s authors said. “The projected rate of growth in the supply of these virgin polymers … will likely keep new, circular models of production and reuse ‘out of the money’ without regulatory stimulus.”

The report said the plastics industry across the world had been allowed to operate with minimal regulation and limited transparency for decades. “These companies are the source of the single-use plastic crisis: their production of new ‘virgin’ polymers from oil, gas and coal feedstocks perpetuates the take-make-waste dynamic of the plastics economy.”

The report said this undermines the shift to a circular economy, including the production of recycled polymers from plastic waste, reusing plastic and using substitute materials. Just 2% of single-use plastic was made from recycled polymers in 2019.

“Plastic pollution is one of the greatest and most critical threats facing our planet,” said Dr Andrew Forrest AO, chairman of the Minderoo Foundation. “The current outlook is set to get worse and we simply cannot allow these producers of fossil fuel-derived plastics to continue as they have done without check. With our oceans choking and plastic impacting our health, we need to see firm intervention from producers, governments and the world of finance to break the cycle of inaction.”

Source: Twenty firms produce 55% of world’s plastic waste, report reveals

According to a new study by Duke Health researchers, the average three-month blood glucose levels of patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease influenced their chance of having more severe scarring in the liver, which can lead to liver failure.

Lead author of the study, Duke Health endocrinologist Anastasia-Stefania Alexopoulos, M.B.B.S., said severe liver disease related to fatty liver is on the rise.

"It's becoming one of the leading causes of liver transplants and liver mortality," Alexopoulos said. "But we don't have any effective treatments that are FDA approved, so really what it comes down to is finding other things we can do to help lower the risk of fatty liver disease progressing to these really poor outcomes."

The study, appearing online in the journal Hepatology, examined the documented glucose levels of 713 adult patients with fatty liver disease prior to a liver biopsy.

The team—including collaborating senior authors associate professor Andrea Coviello, M.D., and professor Manal F. Abdelmalek, M.D., both in the Department of Medicine—found that higher average blood glucose levels in the year leading up to a liver biopsy were associated with more severe swelling of liver cells. For every 1 percentage point increase in hemoglobin HbA1c (a measure of average glucose levels) in the year preceding biopsy, the chances for severe fibrosis rose by 15%.

Similarly, researchers also found that those with moderate glucose control over a period of five years, rather than good control, had more severe swelling of liver cells and a higher likelihood of having advanced liver scarring.

Alexopoulos says these findings are particularly significant for patients with diabetes because a significant portion of that patient population also has nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

"What I really hope is for more people treating diabetes to be aware of fatty liver," Alexopoulos said.

Alexopoulos also said the findings may lead clinicians to reconsider their diabetes treatment approach to prescribe diabetes medications that are known to both improve glucose control and promote weight loss.

"A lot of the times in diabetes we're thinking about heart disease, high blood pressure, cholesterol—we're thinking about all these complications," Alexopoulos said. "I want fatty liver to be added in there."

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In a small study of severely malnourished children in Uganda, researchers found that providing them with a mix containing cowpea flour improved their ability to absorb nutrients and gain weight, while maintaining their gut microbiome comparable to healthy children.

According to the researchers, the findings, published today in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, lay the foundations for larger trials with cowpea-based supplements and highlight the critical role of gut health in restoring nutrition in children with severe acute malnutrition.

Acute malnutrition is a major contributor to child mortality around the world. It remains a leading cause of death in children under five years of age and increases their risk of life-threatening events such as pneumonia, diarrheal disease or infections. Children with severe acute malnutrition can be treated with nutrient-rich, milk-based formulas to restore weight and nutrition, but despite treatment many will later go on to die.

Professor Gary Frost, head of the Center for Translational Nutrition and Food Research at Imperial College London, said: "These are children who have been admitted to hospital and often have other disease, such as bacterial sepsis, which complicates the picture—so they are very fragile.

"High quality feeds are lifesaving for many thousands of children. But sadly, when children are severely malnourished they can struggle to absorb nutrients and despite initial improvements in hospital, many remain very weak and will later go on to die."

"We have been able to show that legume-enriched feeds are well tolerated by these very sick children, and they may also protect their 'good' gut microbes, compared to traditional feeds. Our hope is that this kind of intervention will help them to grow stronger by enabling their bodies to absorb more of the nutrients from the feed."

More than 'calories in'

Researchers at Imperial College London have been exploring the links between gut health and nutrition, with the aim of improving outcomes for severely malnourished children. Growing evidence suggests that gut microbes feed on carbohydrates from our diet, releasing nutrients which maintain the lining of the gut. Without this regular supply of nutrients, the gut lining deteriorates and becomes 'leaky," reducing our ability to absorb nutrients and increasing the risk of bugs entering the bloodstream where they can cause infection.

Previous research by the Imperial team has shown that increasing dietary fiber can help to overcome this 'leaky gut' syndrome and improve the absorption of nutrients, so they designed and tested a new feed fortified with cowpea—which contains a source of easily fermentable carbohydrates and fiber, both known to be key in maintaining gut health.

In a small proof of concept trial, researchers recruited 58 hospitalized children in Uganda with severe acute malnutrition to receive one of three feeds: a conventional feed; a feed containing the plant compound inulin; and a feed fortified with cowpea flour. Children in all three groups received antibiotics and other medical treatments, as needed, in addition to the feed.

Led by Ph.D. candidates Nuala Calder and Kevin Walsh, the team measured changes to weight after seven days of treatment, along with fecal sampling to look at changes to the makeup of their gut microbiome. The children were also followed up at 28 days.

The researchers found that overall, all feeds resulted in comparable weight gain after one week, and duration of hospital stay did not vary between groups. However, the cowpea feed limited the damage to gut microbes associated with antibiotic treatment—which can reduce the richness of the microbiome by killing off key groups of bugs. The same effect was not seen in conventional feeds or those enriched with inulin—a compound derived from plants—highlighting the role of fiber and other elements in the legume feed.

Following 28 days, there was limited difference in mortality between the groups, and sadly, despite treatment 12 children died (3, 6 and 3 from the respective groups). But analysis suggested that across the groups, children that died had higher levels of gut dysfunction and altered levels of short chain fatty acids, indicating reduced diversity of gut microbes.

Protecting gut bugs

Professor Frost said: "Our major finding was that the cowpea enriched feeds actually protect the gut bugs when these children are given antibiotics, so we know that the feed is actually helping the microbiota to survive some of the concurrent medical therapy these children are receiving.

"We also found that the children that died tended to have a worse gut problem than those who survived, so it has highlighted that the gut is very important in rescuing children from severe malnutrition. These legume enriched feeds may be a small step towards improving outcomes for those children."

Professor Kathryn Maitland, Professor of Tropical Pediatric Infectious Disease at Imperial and based in Kenya, said: "This is a very small study, but it's an important first step. The role the gut actively plays in the pathology of severe malnutrition has not been fully appreciated, and there are multiple parameters that need fixing. Fortifying feeds with legumes can go some way towards that. Many of these children may receive multiple antibiotics, which kills the microbiota, leaving only the microbes that are bad for human health, and these legume enriched feeds may actually help to resist that."

Future trials are now planned to test the legume-enriched feeds in larger numbers of children with severe acute malnutrition in more regions. The team believes that if the feeds could be produced regionally, using legumes such as cowpea which can be grown and milled in East Africa, it could help to reduce the dependency on internationally produced feeds which may be more expensive and less effective.

Professor Maitland added: "Many feeds which are imported to East Africa are based on cow's milk, or a dried form of it. They can contain a lot of sugars, such as sucrose and lactose, and these children can't absorb this. In fact, quite a lot of these malnourished children may develop severe diarrhea from these feeds as they are lacking the enzymes to properly digest and absorb them, so our next steps are to tackle that as well.

"We think that the next iterations of our feed will include legumes, but will also not include any aspect of cow's milk, replacing the sucrose with other carbohydrate sources. This also means that they can be produced locally."

Professor Frost added: "We know that we can reverse the malnutrition, but this isn't really fixing the whole problem. This approach is a radical change for these children. It's taking a very different view of feeding. It's not just about the nutrients flowing in, it's about how compounds in plants are metabolized, and underlying gut health."

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