Banks Called Out For Their Role In Financing Plastic Pollution

Banks Called Out For Their Role In Financing Plastic Pollution

A seal pup choking on a fishing line



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The pressure to clean up plastic pollution faded in 2020 thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to a surge in the use of plastic in PPE and to keep food and other purchases safe.

However, the problem has not gone away – in many ways, it has worsened – and that pressure will return with a vengeance in 2021. Each minute, a truck full of plastics ends up in our oceans and around 1 million marine birds and 100,000 marine animals die each year from eating plastic. Plastic packaging pollution is now found from the deepest oceans to the top of Mount Everest and the average person eats about 70,000 particles of microplastic a year. 

A new report, Bankrolling Plastics, says that banks are in part responsible for the plastic pollution crisis, because they are “lending vast sums of capital without making any effort to address the plastic pollution crisis. “By indiscriminately funding actors in the plastics supply chain, banks have failed to acknowledge their role in enabling global plastic pollution. They are not introducing any due diligence systems, contingent loan criteria, or financing exclusions