Minimizes pollution

Environment

Pivotal Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.

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Why shareholder democracy is pivotal

Pollution is what a company's own plants release and what it is fined for releasing, and the industries that release the most have asked Washington for relief from the rules governing it and been given it, so this rates at the top of the scale on both counts. The score behind the issue is a company's sulfur oxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions measured against its revenue, together with three years of federal environmental penalties, all of them consequences of decisions taken inside the plant gate. The sums are large. 3M agreed in June 2023 to settle claims over PFAS in public drinking water with payments of $10.5 billion to $12.5 billion between 2024 and 2036, in an agreement under which it admits no liability and waives no defenses. Owners have moved adjacent conduct and the record shows how reversible it is: Amazon's single-use shipping plastic fell 11.6 percent, from 97,222 to 85,916 metric tons, across the calendar year in which nearly 49 percent of votes cast at its 2022 meeting asked it to cut packaging, and Kellogg's pledge to phase pre-harvest glyphosate out of its wheat and oat supply, sought by As You Sow in 2017 and 2020, was dropped by Kellanova when the company split. The political side is the unusual part. The Environmental Protection Agency opened an email address in March 2025 inviting industry to request presidential exemptions from nine air toxics rules, the American Chemistry Council and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers wrote jointly seeking a blanket exemption for their roughly 640 member companies, and eight proclamations then granted two-year reprieves to more than 180 facilities in 38 states and Puerto Rico, among them Freeport-McMoRan's Arizona copper smelter and two Phillips 66 refineries. More than 70 of those facilities had faced formal enforcement by the agency in the previous five years, and the case the companies made was about money, Freeport saying compliance would cost hundreds of millions for minimal emission reductions and the trade groups warning that members would otherwise shut units or move them offshore. A cost is a reason to choose and not a bar on choosing, and asking by joint letter for an exemption and receiving one for your members is the obstacle itself rather than a milder version of it, which is why this outcome is held back both by what these companies emit and by what their associations have obtained.

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

6 campaigns on record

As You Sow at Kellanova☆ Follow2024 · shareholder resolution

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

22% of Kellanova Shareholders Vote for Action on Pesticides at Company's Annual General Meeting, As You Sow

As You Sow at McDonald's Corporation☆ Follow2023 · shareholder resolution

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

As You Sow at PepsiCo, Inc.☆ Follow2022 · shareholder resolution

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.

PepsiCo Pledges to Reduce Single-Use Packaging as Requested by As You Sow Proposal, Waste360 / As You Sow

As You Sow at Amazon☆ Follow2022 · shareholder resolution

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

As You Sow at Kroger☆ Follow2021 · shareholder resolution

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

As You Sow at Kellogg☆ Follow2020 · shareholder resolution

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

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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 JUST Capital's, and we link to their original.

How we score dependency, in full.