By Ariel Schwartz
- Published on September 21, 2010 by Fast Company
The Carbon Disclosure Project, a nonprofit launched in 2000, has convinced 2,500 companies in 60 countries to measure and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. In 2009, the CDP launched the Water Disclosure Project, a similar measurement and disclosure project for water. But CO2 and water are only part of the corporate pollution picture. Enter the Plastic Disclosure Project, an investor-led initiative that will ask corporations to measure and reveal their production and use of plastic and plastic wastes.
The project, launched this week at the Clinton Global Initiative, is the brainchild of Project Kaisei, ASrIA (The Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia), and HKUST (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology). Plastic disclosure is the next logical step after carbon and water disclosure--less than 15% of plastic is recycled, and over 7 million tons of trash enters marine environments each year.