Industry & Corporations

The Fact Sheet unpacks why petrochemicals can no longer be relied on as a growth engine. Despite mounting evidence of structural overcapacity, erratic demand, and falling margins, capacity additions continue across regions, especially in Asia-Pacific.

This report exposes how some of the world’s largest petrochemicalcompanies are expanding production while flooding the treaty negotiationswith hundreds of lobbyists in an effort to weaken ambition and shiftattention onto false solutions like chemical recycling.

Advanced recycling, also known as chemical recycling, refers to a variety of processes used to break plastics into their constituent molecules. The industry has increasingly promoted these technologies, as public concern about the environmental and health effects of plastic pollution has grown. Yet the rollout of these technologies has been plagued by problems, according to this new analysis from the fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group CCI. 

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. 

In 2022, The Big Plastic Count was the biggest investigation into UK household plastic waste. It showed that almost 100 billion pieces of plastic are thrown away in the UK each year, with hardly any of it recycled. With your help, we’ll gather more, game-changing evidence that will push the government to take bold action on plastic.

This report critically examines the European Commission’s JRC study on plastic recycling technologies, exposing major methodological flaws that favour chemical recycling. It challenges the credibility of industry-backed data and highlights the true environmental costs of solvent- and pyrolysis-based methods. It also provides clear recommendations for policymakers.

The report looks into the sachet economy in the Philippines that continues to add to and worsen the growing plastics pollution problem, showing how the big businesses corrupted Filipino’s tingi culture. It explores the public attitude towards plastic pollution and presents new findings and recommendations for companies and policymakers.

In response to the plastic crisis, consumer goods companies and the petrochemical industry have supported and promoted countless miraculous-sounding technologies, pushing back on their bad reputations as major plastic polluters. CreaSolv3, Unilever Indonesia's hailed flagship project on this front, spectacularly failed and was secretly shuttered two years later.