Introduction of Novel Entities
Transgressed: the introduction of novel entities (synthetic chemicals, plastics, and other human-made substances) is among the seven boundaries breached in the 2025 Planetary Health Check.
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
Novel entities enter the environment almost entirely as the products and wastes of identifiable listed companies. Chemical and petrochemical producers make the substances, and consumer brands and retailers put plastics and additives into commerce. The same firms' lobbying is the documented block on the international frameworks meant to control them. CIEL counted at least 234 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists registered for the August 2025 Global Plastics Treaty session, more than the combined delegations of all 27 EU states. Dow and the American Chemistry Council fielded seven each and ExxonMobil six. On PFAS, the Forever Lobbying Project traced hundreds of industry players across some 15 sectors fighting the EU's universal restriction. 3M's contamination produced a 10.3 billion dollar settlement with US water systems in 2023, showing the liability owners already carry. Shareholder pressure is the live countervailing force, with As You Sow packaging resolutions drawing roughly 49 percent support at Amazon and winning commitments from McDonald's. Production, formulation, and political advocacy all sit inside boardrooms that shareholders elect, so owners voting their values can deliver most of this outcome. Governments are needed mainly to codify the rules the industry stops blocking.
How this was scoredPivotal
Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Planetary Health Check 2025, Planetary Boundaries Science Lab / Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 2025-09-24
- Fossil Fuel and Petrochemical Lobbyists Overrun Plastics Treaty Negotiations (INC-5.2), Center for International Environmental Law, 2025-08-07
- The Forever Lobbying Project, Forever Pollution Project (Le Monde and partners), 2025-01-14
- 3M's Historic $10 Billion 'Forever Chemical' Payout Is Just The Tip of the PFAS Iceberg, TIME, 2023-06-23
- Amazon, Yum Brands, Kroger face upcoming shareholder votes on circular packaging, Waste Dive, 2023-05-10
9 campaigns on record
Provide accurate recyclability information for plastic cups and disclose details on the transition to reusable cups.
Result: withdrawn after company agreement
Starbucks agreed to ensure it provides accurate recyclability information and to share details about its transition to reusable cups by early 2026.
Our Top Ten Victories from the 2025 Shareholder Advocacy Season, Green Century
Disclose the risks pesticide use (including glyphosate) in its agricultural supply chain poses to the company, after Kellanova dropped Kellogg's earlier glyphosate phase-out commitment following the corporate split.
Result: 22% of shareholders voted in favor The proposal was precatory (advisory and non-binding).
we found no documented change at Kellanova following this vote
Issue a report examining the risks and opportunities of adopting reusable packaging systems to cut single-use plastic packaging.
Result: withdrawn after company agreement
McDonald's agreed to publish a comprehensive study, targeted for early 2024, examining reusable-packaging risks and opportunities.
Amazon, Yum Brands, Kroger face upcoming shareholder votes on circular packaging, Waste Dive
Publish an annual reuse/refill baseline assessment and expand reusable and refillable packaging pilots.
Result: withdrawn after company agreement
Keurig Dr Pepper agreed to publish an annual reuse/refill baseline assessment in its corporate social responsibility report and to launch new reuse and refill pilots by 2024.
Colgate-Palmolive, Keurig Dr Pepper enhancing reuse efforts, Packaging Dive
Publish a baseline assessment of reuse and refill packaging pilots and disclose plans to expand them, and explore accelerating its 2030 plastic-reduction targets.
Result: withdrawn after company agreement
Colgate-Palmolive agreed to publish a reuse/refill baseline assessment in its 2023 sustainability report and to more fully disclose existing and planned reuse pilots.
Colgate-Palmolive, Keurig Dr Pepper enhancing reuse efforts, Packaging Dive
Report on actions PepsiCo could take to reduce its reliance on single-use plastic packaging, including strengthening refillable-bottle goals.
Result: withdrawn after company agreement
PepsiCo committed to set, by the end of 2022, a time-bound goal for the percentage of beverage volume delivered through packaging-avoiding or packaging-minimizing strategies such as refillable bottles, fountain drinks, at-home systems like SodaStream, and powder/drop formats.
Reduce plastic packaging used to ship orders and report on the company's plans to do so.
With Green Century Capital Management
Result: Approximately 48-49% of votes cast were in favor (shares representing about $387 billion voted yes); described as the most-supported environmental proposal in Amazon's history. The proposal was precatory (advisory and non-binding).
Amazon's own reporting showed single-use plastic used to ship orders fell from 97,222 metric tons in 2021 to 85,916 metric tons in 2022, an 11.6% decrease; As You Sow credits shareholder pressure though Amazon's sustainability report does not explicitly attribute the change to the resolution.
Nearly half of Amazon shareholders agree: Time to cut back on plastic packaging, Grist
Issue a report by December 2021 estimating how much plastic packaging Kroger releases into the environment and describing the company's strategy to reduce plastic packaging.
Result: 45.6% of votes cast were in favor The proposal was precatory (advisory and non-binding).
Kroger later pledged that its Our Brands packaging would be 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2030 and launched a mail-back recycling program with TerraCycle's Loop, but As You Sow found the company set no recycled-content goal for plastics and had cut its earlier 20% recycled-content pledge in half.
Kroger: Sustainable Packaging Policies for Plastics, As You Sow
Eliminate the use of glyphosate as a pre-harvest drying (desiccant) agent on wheat and oats in Kellogg's supply chain.
Result: withdrawn after company agreement Resolutions were filed in both 2017 and 2020 and were resolved by a negotiated company commitment rather than a vote.
Kellogg committed to phase out pre-harvest glyphosate use in its wheat and oat supply chains by the end of 2025.
Kellogg works with suppliers to phase out controversial glyphosate, Supply Chain Dive
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Doughnut Economics's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.