The environmental group released the findings after surveying over 2,000 participants who kept track of all the single-use plastic waste they discarded for a week last July and logged the results in a smartphone app. The group then categorized the results according to manufacturer, function and material.
Out of a total of 86,055 pieces of plastic waste reported by the participants, 78.3 percent came from food packaging. Among them, waste from drinking water and beverage bottles accounted for the most at 37.6 percent, followed by waste from snacks and takeout meal packaging. Lotte Chilsung was responsible for the highest portion of the figure with 3,864 pieces of waste, nearly 12 percent of the total volume of trash. Greenpeace Korea said the company has been the top producer of single-use plastic waste since 2021.
JDC ranked second with 7.6 percent and Coca-Cola was in third with 5.3 percent. Logistics company Coupang, with its private-brand drinking water product, and Dong-A Otsuka continued the list.
The top five firms accounted for nearly 10,000 pieces of single-use plastic waste, over 30 percent of the total plastic waste from the drinking water and beverage sector.
“These top polluters have been promoting how they effectively reduced plastic waste by making their PET bottles lighter and removing labels from the bottles,” Greenpeace Korea said. “But it was in fact their greenwashing effort to cover up the fact that they have been generating and dumping plastic waste in larger amounts than they saved.”
Lotte Chilsung also topped the ranking of plastic waste generators among food product manufacturers in the country. Out of over 4,500 manufacturers, the company’s products accounted for the most with 4.6 percent. Nongshim, JDC, Coca-Cola and Ottogi followed in the ranking. The top 10 firms accounted for over 19,000 pieces of single-use plastic waste, over 22 percent of the entire batch.
For its report, Greenpeace Korea studied ESG reports and performance reports disclosed by the firms. It said none of the companies had any plans to reuse or refill the used plastic bottles, a measure considered most critical for waste reduction.
“These top 10 firms hardly changed in our survey in the past four years as they have been leading the consumption of a massive amount of plastics and the trend of single-use products in the country,” the report said. “Despite people’s consistent demands for the companies to change their business practices to be eco-friendlier, the firms have yet to invest in serious efforts to reduce their plastic waste.”
Global environmentalist groups have been tracking companies’ volumes of single-use plastic waste for years. Break Free From Plastic, a global alliance with about 2,300 environmental organizations worldwide, conducted brand audits for global companies from 2018 until 2022. It designated Coca-Cola as the top polluter for five consecutive years while revealing Nestle, PepsiCo and Unilever as other global polluters.
“Not to mention that these firms contributed immensely to generating plastic waste globally, they agreed that reuse is more effective than recycling,” said Kim Nara, a plastic campaigner from Greenpeace Korea.
