Target 11.6: Reduce urban air pollution and waste impacts
By 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality and municipal and other waste management
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
WHO attributes 4.2 million premature deaths in 2019 to ambient air pollution and names energy, transport, industry and waste management as the sectors requiring intervention. All are dominated by public companies, including automakers, utilities, refiners, waste firms and packaging producers. Corporate lobbying is a documented obstacle on vehicle rules, with 14 of 15 major automakers opposing at least one electric-vehicle policy according to InfluenceMap. Packaging producers set the material mix that municipal waste systems must handle. That is why 2025 shareholder proposals on unrecyclable flexible packaging drew 13 to 17 percent support at PepsiCo, Mondelez, Amazon and Home Depot. If these companies made clean urban air and circular materials core objectives and lobbied for tighter emission, fuel and packaging standards, most of the industrial and vehicular share of urban pollution would change. Much of the waste stream would change with it. Municipal collection, landfill management, transit and zoning remain public tasks. Household cooking and open burning in poorer cities are outside corporate reach, so owners are a necessary lever rather than a decisive one.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
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
- Ambient (outdoor) air quality and health (fact sheet), World Health Organization, 2024-10-24
- Automakers and Climate Policy Advocacy: A Global Analysis, InfluenceMap, 2024-05-01
- Four Strong Shareholder Votes on Unrecyclable Flexible Packaging Highlight the 2025 Shareholder Season for Circular Economy Action, As You Sow, 2025-06-16
3 campaigns on record
Report on the risks of continuing to use flexible plastic packaging that cannot be recycled, meaning pouches, sachets and thin film, and on what the company will do about it.
Result: Voted at the 2025 annual meeting and received 11.6 percent support.
We found no documented change.
Report on the risks of continuing to use flexible plastic packaging that cannot be recycled, meaning pouches, sachets and thin film, and on what the company will do about it.
Result: Voted at the 2025 annual meeting and received 13.6 percent support.
We found no documented change.
Report on how the company could match its peers by committing to make all of its packaging recyclable at the curb, reusable or compostable.
Result: Voted at the 2025 annual meeting. As You Sow records 17.4 percent support; Packaging Dive reports the figure as 17 percent.
We found no documented change. The company opposed the proposal and pointed to plastics it has phased out in recent years.
The Home Depot Inc: Sustainable Packaging Policies, As You Sow, 2024-12-04
Related subjects on other maps
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 UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.