Five oil and chemical companies which promised to divert plastic from environment accused of producing 132m tonnes of it

Summary

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, led by ExxonMobil, Dow, Shell, TotalEnergies, and ChevronPhillips, is under criticism for producing 132 million tonnes of plastic in five years—1,000 times more than the 118,500 tonnes it cleaned up.

Established in 2019 to combat plastic pollution, the alliance quietly abandoned its ambitious cleanup target.

Critics, including Greenpeace, accuse AEPW of greenwashing and lobbying against production caps in a proposed global treaty on plastic pollution.

Environmentalists argue that reducing virgin plastic production is the only sustainable solution.