Plastic pollution is absent in 93% of official policies from Europe's top banks, raising concerns over sustainability and greenwashing risks
Plastic pollution: European banks lack real policies
A new report by Planet Tracker reviewed more than 4,000 official documents from Europe’s top 30 banks to assess how they address plastic pollution. Only 7% even mention the issue.
Europe’s leading banks routinely evaluate a long list of risk factors to guide their investment strategies. This is driven in part by internal financial logic and in part by mounting sustainability and ESG regulations. Yet one major threat remains largely ignored: plastic pollution.
To highlight this gap, Planet Tracker conducted an in-depth analysis of the continent’s biggest financial institutions, examining their policies on plastic pollution using natural language processing (NLP) to scan over 4,100 official documents. The goal: to determine how, and to what extent, plastic-related risks influence lending and investment decisions.
Plastic barely registers in bank policies
The results are troubling. Only 7% of the documents mentioned plastic at all. And within that group, just 24% contained language relevant, or even partially relevant, to financial decision-making. In other words, most of Europe’s major banks have no dedicated policies to reduce, manage, or mitigate plastic use.
When plastic is mentioned, the focus tends to fall on end-of-life technologies, such as chemical recycling. But Planet Tracker warns that these solutions are questionable at best, and may do more to support greenwashing than to address the root causes of plastic pollution.
The report identifies several structural weaknesses in how banks handle this issue:
- Minimal recognition of financial risk: Only 6% of the analyzed texts included financing-related keywords, suggesting limited awareness of the financial risks tied to plastic production and pollution.
- Narrow focus on recycling over prevention: Most strategies center on recycling and waste management rather than upstream solutions like reducing plastic production.
- Inconsistent approaches across banks: Institutions such as Danske Bank and Standard Chartered adopt markedly different positions, especially on chemical recycling.
Rethinking the role of finance in tackling plastic pollution
So how should the financial sector respond? Planet Tracker argues that banks must first stop financing single-use plastic products and new virgin plastic production. From there, they should shift their investment strategies toward circular solutions and supporting technologies that reduce the volume of plastic already in circulation.
For a truly sustainable future, Europe’s financial institutions must close the policy gap on plastic pollution, and back up their green pledges with real, measurable action.
