WPP: Promoting Plastics 

It’s hard to miss adverts promoting the “magic” of CocaCola, “real beauty” by Dove or Tampax’s “flow forecast”.

It’s also hard to miss the plastics crisis. With mountains of plastic overwhelming communities, strangling sea creatures, consistently turning up in human placenta and producing toxic air and water pollution, experts are warning that plastics pose a ‘critical human health crisis’.

Despite this, the largest advertising firm in the world continues to profit from promoting plastics. WPP’s agencies make glitzy ads that drive up demand for plastic products, even as they shift responsibility for plastic pollution onto individuals.

Among WPP’s clients are three of the world’s top four plastics polluters: CocaCola, Danone, Nestlé, who together are responsible for 17% of branded plastic pollution globally.

With CocaCola’s chief executive saying he sees marketing as a “motor for growth”, advertising is playing a major role in the plastics crisis - which can only be solved if we produce less plastic, not more.

Several of WPP’s clients, including Danone, Nestlé, Proctor & Gamble and CocaCola, are facing legal proceedings for their role in toxic plastic pollution. Others, like Unilever, CocaCola and have been criticised for breaking their pledges to reduce plastic waste.

And, with 99% of plastics made from fossil fuels, the environmental and human rights impacts of promoting plastics go beyond plastic waste. Fossil fuel companies, including many of WPP’s clients, are betting on plastics to maintain demand for fossil fuels, pouring billions into new plastic plants and promoting false recycling claims to help maintain demand for oil. According to Human Rights Watch, “plastics and petrochemicals are estimated to drive 30% of the growth in oil demand by 2030 and nearly half of the growth in oil demand by 2050.”

WPP has policies to make sure there are no plastic straws and plenty of recycling bins in its offices. It has pledged to work with its clients towards reducing plastic waste, including “inspiring consumers to think differently about plastic packaging and changing their behaviour”.

The holding company has made a plastics awareness campaign video for Greenpeace, and won awards (and lots of positive brand awareness) for recycling themed ads for Coke. But does this meaningfully offset the negative impacts of its work promoting plastics polluters?

Here we take a look at WPP’s work for major plastics clients, and discuss why we think this is in breach of internationally respected OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct.

CocaCola 

In 2021, as concerns mounted over the negative impacts of plastic pollution on human health and the environment, WPP pitched for and won the $4 billion CocaCola account. WPP now has responsibility for the marketing of over 200 of CocaCola’s brands across 195 countries, CocaCola said WPP would lead the brand in “executing a new marketing model that is built to drive long-term growth for the entire company’s portfolio of brands”.

WPP allocated a bespoke WPP team, OpenX, to the Coke account, which has successfully helped the brand to drive sales. In 2023, James Quincey, chief executive of Coca-Cola, said he sees marketing as a “motor for growth.”

According to WPP agency Grey, CocaCola’s 2022 Christmas ad campaign resulted in global volume sales growth of 0.6%. WPP also reports how a 2022 Sprite marketing strategy caused “a 10% increase on sales performance YoY [year-over-year] and an increase in the weekly drinker recruitment rate of 35% YoY.” Like many Coke ads, this campaign was designed to “connect” with young people.

In December 2024, CocaCola weakened its recycling and reuse goals for tens of billions of bottles each year, as well as watering down its greenhouse gas pollution targets. In a 2024 study of plastic pollution worldwide, CocaCola was responsible for 11% of all branded content. Although Coke’s ads routinely show glass bottles rather than plastic, CocaCola said it generated 137 billion plastic bottles in 2023.

Break Free From Plastics’ global plastic audit has named CocaCola as the world’s top plastics polluter every year since 2016. While Coke weakens its environmental targets, its plastics pollution is growing.

Meanwhile, CocaCola is facing lawsuits across the world. LA County has taken CocaCola to court for its “significant role in plastic pollution’s negative impacts on the environment and public health, their misrepresentations to the public surrounding the recyclability of plastic beverage containers, and their failure to disclose significant environmental and health harms associated with the use of plastic beverage containers.”

In Earth Island Institute v. Coca-Cola Co., the company faces a deceptive marketing lawsuit alleging that “Coca-Cola misled consumers regarding its environmental sustainability with statements that touted the company’s efforts to address packaging waste when the company actually was failing to take necessary steps to meet its sustainability goals.” 

WPP has responsibilities under the OECD Guidelines to conduct due diligence relating to its clients’ adverse impacts, and to take necessary action to cease or prevent those impacts. However, despite strong evidence of CocaCola’s adverse impacts, and the company’s failure to mitigate these, WPP continues to work to promote and greenwash the company. WPP even recently (2020-21) pitched for the global account in order to help Coke “drive long-term growth for the entire company’s portfolio of brands”.

Unilever: Dove

WPP’s major agency Ogilvy has worked with Unilever brand Dove for almost 70 years. Ogilvy’s marketing campaigns have positioned Dove as an ambassador for women’s health and wellbeing, with positive impacts for Dove’s reputation and sales.

The 2021 advert Reverse Selfie, by WPP’s Mindshare + Ogilvy, increased brand affinity, “the emotional connection between customers and companies”, by 21% and sales by 11%. Ogilvy’s “The Cost of Beauty, also in partnership with Mindshare, earned Dove reputational benefit in thousands of new social media followers.  

WPP continues to profit from marketing Dove, claiming that through the brand’s 66 year relationship with Ogilvy “they have transformed a humble soap brand into a $7.3 billion social movement”. This success, however, comes at a cost: plastic pollution is damaging human rights, health and the environment around the world, particularly in communities most vulnerable to pollution.

According to Greenpeace, Dove produces 6.4 billion single-use plastic sachets per year. The NGO points out that while Dove’s parent company Unilever “claims to want a ‘waste-free’ world, just 0.2% of its packaging is reusable”.

WPP is Unilever’s chief marketing partner, winning more of the brand’s business in 2024 even as Unilever rowed back on its environmental commitments, including plastic usage - a move that caused environmental groups to say the company’s bosses “should hang their heads in shame” and that “the tsunami of plastic they [Unilever] produce each year meant their existing targets were already not fit for purpose. We needed much more. And so rather than doubling down, they’re quietly dressing up their backpedalling and low ambition as worthy pragmatism.”

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