Greenpeace (Amsterdam / The Netherlands; www.greenpeace.org) has announced that major car manufacturer General Motors (GM, Detroit, Michigan / USA; www.gm.com) has quit the Plastics Industry Association (Plastics, Washington, D.C. / USA; www.plasticsindustry.org) over its policies. The US carmaker is the fourth in recent months to leave the association and follows in the steps of SC Johnson (Racine, Wisconsin / USA; www.scjohnson.com), Coca-Cola (Atlanta, Georgia / USA; www.coca-cola.com) and PepsiCo (Harrison, New York / USA; www.pepsico.com) – see Plasteurope.com of 11.10.2019. The consumer giants said they have decided to stop supporting the Plastics Industry Association as it continues to lobby through the American Progressive Bag Alliance (APBA, Washington D.C.; www.bagalliance.org) to oppose bans on plastics.

Various US environmental groups including Sierra Club (San Francisco, California; www.sierraclub.org), As you Sow (Berkeley, California; www.asyousow.org), The Last Beach Cleanup (Laguna Niguel, California; www.lastbeachcleanup.org), Boston Trust Walden (Boston, Massachusetts; www.bostontrustwalden.com) and Greenpeace have pressured GM and other companies to sever ties with Plastics.

Boston Trust Walden’s director of ESG shareowner engagement, Timothy Smith, said it is vitally important for companies to compare their positions on plastics pollution with their lobbying and public policy advocacy on plastics waste as well as lobbying by trade associations in which they are members and pay dues. “Increasingly, this evaluation results in companies ending their membership in such plastics lobbying groups,” he said. John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA oceans campaign director, added that the Plastics Industry Association’s continued support for anti-democratic laws “has left them with few members other than petrochemical companies.”