By Conrad MacKerron, Senior Vice President
With the findings from a recent study projecting that oceans will contain more plastic than fish by 2050, our long-running Waste Program is taking on the critical issue of ocean plastics pollution. We believe polystyrene foam to be among the worst offenders, so we will be pressing McDonald’s to stop using polystyrene foam hot beverage cups globally — the company already quit using foam cups in its 14,000 U.S. restaurants in response to our pressure, accounting for a cool 770 million foam cups annually. We will also engage with retail shipping giants Amazon, Target, and Walmart to eliminate foam from their mail order packing materials, and press consumer brands like Kraft and Kroger to make more packaging recyclable, which diverts more material into recycling streams, not rivers and oceans, and boosts end markets for post-consumer stuff. Engaging companies to shift their practices can have a major impact. After all, our oceans depend on it.
