Target 12.2: Sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources
By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
Resource extraction and use are overwhelmingly corporate activities in mining, oil and gas, agriculture, forestry and manufacturing. UNEP's Global Resources Outlook 2024 finds extraction has tripled in 50 years and rich countries use six times the resources of low-income ones. As You Sow's 2024 Plastic Promises Scorecard ranked 225 companies across 15 industries on plastic reduction, recycled content and reuse, finding only 22 of 147 companies with recyclability goals on track to meet them. Corporate lobbying is a documented obstacle on resource policy. InfluenceMap finds BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies maintain a global network of industry associations highly active against Paris-aligned policy, while only 12 percent of their forecast 2022 capex went to low-carbon activities. Conduct is decisive and lobbying is the obstacle, so owners can deliver most of this outcome.
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
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Files plastic packaging resolutions asking consumer companies and retailers to reduce unrecyclable flexible plastic and set reduction, recycled content and reuse goals, and publishes the Plastic Promises Scorecard grading company progress.
2 campaigns on record
Issue a report describing how P&G could address flexible plastic packaging in line with the Pew Report findings to reduce its contribution to plastic pollution.
Result: 13.9 percent
Procter & Gamble Co: Sustainable Packaging Policies for Flexible Plastics, As You Sow, 2025
Assess and report on how Amazon can reduce its use of unrecyclable flexible plastic packaging and its contribution to plastic pollution.
Result: not stated in source
The SEC rejected Amazon's request to exclude the proposal from its 2025 proxy, the second flexible plastic proposal allowed to proceed in 2025 after a similar one at PepsiCo.
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.