The growing plastic pollution crisis poses increasing risks to our company. By 2050 there could be more plastic than fish by weight in oceans. Corporations could face an annual financial risk of approximately $100 billion should governments require them to cover the waste management costs of the packaging they produce, a policy that is increasingly being enacted around the globe.

Recently, Pew Charitable Trusts released a groundbreaking study, Breaking the Plastic Wave, concluding that if all current industry and government commitments were met, ocean plastic deposition would be reduced by only seven percent. Without immediate and sustained new commitments throughout the plastics value chain, annual flows of plastics into oceans could nearly triple by 2040.

The Pew report also finds that improved recycling is insufficient to stem the plastic tide, and must be coupled with reductions in use, materials redesign, and substitution. It also finds that at least one-third of plastic demand can and should be reduced. The report states that reducing plastic production is the most attractive solution from environmental, economic, and social perspectives. The European Union has banned 10 single-use plastic products commonly found in ocean cleanups and enacted a $1/kg tax on non-recycled plastic packaging waste.

Church & Dwight lags peers in reducing risk from plastic packaging use. Competitor Unilever has taken the most significant action to date, agreeing to cut virgin plastic packaging use by 50% by 2025, including absolute elimination of 100,000 tons of plastic packaging. Seventeen other consumer goods companies have virgin plastic reduction goals, including Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Nestlé, and Target. Church & Dwight has no plastic packaging reduction goal.

The company laudably has a goal to increase its use of recycled content plastic, yet the company makes no known financial contributions to support U.S. recycling infrastructure. Church & Dwight lags behind 29 of its peers that actively make regular contributions to recycling infrastructure, ensuring their packaging never becomes plastic pollution.

The company received a score of D+ in a recent As You Sow scorecard ranking corporate leadership on plastic pollution. This ranking demonstrates that Church & Dwight lags in its commitments, specifically on overall cuts in plastic packaging and producer responsibility efforts to support recycling and the availability of recycled content.