Target 12.4: Sound management of chemicals and wastes
By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
Chemical producers, petrochemical firms and waste handlers are the actors whose conduct determines releases. As You Sow's report Pesticides in the Pantry graded 17 major food companies on managing pesticide risk in their supply chains, noting more than 1 billion pounds of pesticides are applied in U.S. agriculture each year. The producers' lobbying is the documented obstacle to the agreed frameworks. CIEL counted at least 234 fossil-fuel and chemical-industry lobbyists at the August 2025 plastics-treaty session (INC-5.2), more than the combined delegations of the 27 EU member states. Dow and the American Chemistry Council fielded seven each, and ExxonMobil six. Owners of these public companies can vote on both product stewardship and lobbying alignment. Conduct is necessary and lobbying is the blocking 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
2 campaigns on record
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
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Result: withdrawn after company agreement Resolutions were filed in both 2017 and 2020 and were resolved by a negotiated company commitment rather than a vote.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
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.