Coca-Cola and Unilever among dozens of plastic brands tied to Texas fracking, investigation reveals

By Lottie Limb

More than 25 major consumer brands and petrochemicals have been traced to fracking in the Permian Basin, one of the world’s ‘carbon bombs’.

A Magnum ice cream wrapper caught in the wind, a Coca Cola bottle lost at sea. When we picture plastic pollution, it’s the littering of items like these that springs to mind. But new research points to problems upstream too, tracking plastic production to the oil fields where it originates.

For the first time, fracking operations in the US have been linked to ethane exports to Europe through major petrochemical companies and on to globally recognised brands.