Forty-five percent of shareholders, representing shares worth $10.2 billion, supported a proposal filed by As You Sow, at Kroger’s annual meeting. The proposal asked the company to disclose how much of its packaging escapes to the environment, disclose company strategies or goals to reduce use of plastic packaging and evaluate opportunities for dramatically reducing the amount of plastics used in packaging.
Earlier this month 35 percent of shareholders at Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, supported an identical As You Sow proposal. Five other global consumer goods companies who received the same proposal from As You Sow as Kroger have agreed to reduce use of virgin plastic. Target Corp. and Keurig Dr Pepper will cut virgin plastic 20 percent by 2025. Mondelez committed to a 5 percent absolute reduction, including a 25 percent cut in virgin plastic in its rigid plastic packaging. PepsiCo and Walmart agreed to cuts that are still being finalized and will be disclosed later this year.
Published in the September 2021 Edition