Oil & Gas

The oil, gas, and petrochemical industry wields substantial power in both the climate and plastics treaty negotiations, and has used that power to stymie progress in both. Rather than repeat the failures of the climate negotiations, plastics negotiators should seek to create a “plastics club” for ambitious action. 

The report exposes the climate footprint of the planned petrochemical buildout in America. It identifies the most climate-damaging projects and products, demonstrates carbon capture’s inability to significantly mitigate emissions, and uncovers how taxpayers are being misled into funding polluting projects sold as ‘climate solutions.’ 

The Chinese online fashion brand SHEIN has promoted fast fashion to ultra fast fashion. It’s built on the exploitation of the environment and people, relying on the lack of enforcement of protection regulations for the environment as well as workers and consumers.

This investigation underscores the pivotal role the fashion industry plays in perpetuating fossil fuel dependency and signals a concerning lack of action to break ties with Russian oil – through which the fashion brands are indirectly funding petrochemical expansion and the war in Ukraine.

Global fashion brands are promoting circularity, but in reality that's still a myth. Nowhere is the failure of fast fashion more visible than in the countries where many of these cheap clothes end up: on huge dump sites, burnt on open fires, along riverbeds and washed out into the sea, with severe consequences for people and the planet.

The report shows how Big Oil and the plastics industry have deceptively promoted recycling as a solution to plastic waste management for more than 50 years, despite their long-standing knowledge that plastic recycling is not technically or economically viable at scale.

Every single stage of the lifecycle of plastic, from the extraction of oil and gas to the disposal of plastic waste, causes harm to our environment and our health. It's time to look at the big picture. This is the life cycle of plastic-from cradle to grave.

The fashion industry and its prevailing fast-fashion business model rely heavily on the use of cheap synthetic fibres, which are produced from fossil fuels, such as oil and gas. This report investigates the behaviour of some of the biggest fashion brands and retailers regarding their use of synthetic fibres and transparency about doing so.