JUST CapitalBeta
Minimizes pollution
Environment
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
Pollution is what a company's own plants release and what it is fined for releasing, and the industries that release the most have asked Washington for relief from the rules governing it and been given it, so this rates at the top of the scale on both counts. The score behind the issue is a company's sulfur oxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions measured against its revenue, together with three years of federal environmental penalties, all of them consequences of decisions taken inside the plant gate. The sums are large. 3M agreed in June 2023 to settle claims over PFAS in public drinking water with payments of $10.5 billion to $12.5 billion between 2024 and 2036, in an agreement under which it admits no liability and waives no defenses. Owners have moved adjacent conduct and the record shows how reversible it is: Amazon's single-use shipping plastic fell 11.6 percent, from 97,222 to 85,916 metric tons, across the calendar year in which nearly 49 percent of votes cast at its 2022 meeting asked it to cut packaging, and Kellogg's pledge to phase pre-harvest glyphosate out of its wheat and oat supply, sought by As You Sow in 2017 and 2020, was dropped by Kellanova when the company split. The political side is the unusual part. The Environmental Protection Agency opened an email address in March 2025 inviting industry to request presidential exemptions from nine air toxics rules, the American Chemistry Council and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers wrote jointly seeking a blanket exemption for their roughly 640 member companies, and eight proclamations then granted two-year reprieves to more than 180 facilities in 38 states and Puerto Rico, among them Freeport-McMoRan's Arizona copper smelter and two Phillips 66 refineries. More than 70 of those facilities had faced formal enforcement by the agency in the previous five years, and the case the companies made was about money, Freeport saying compliance would cost hundreds of millions for minimal emission reductions and the trade groups warning that members would otherwise shut units or move them offshore. A cost is a reason to choose and not a bar on choosing, and asking by joint letter for an exemption and receiving one for your members is the obstacle itself rather than a milder version of it, which is why this outcome is held back both by what these companies emit and by what their associations have obtained.
How this was scoredPivotal
Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- JUST Capital 2025 Ranking Methodology (as of February 3, 2025), JUST Capital
- 3M Company, Form 8-K (PFAS public water system settlement, June 2023), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- Amazon.com, Inc., Form 8-K, Item 5.07 (2022 annual meeting voting results), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- Amazon Reports Significant Drop in Plastic Use as Sought in Shareholder Proposals Filed by As You Sow, As You Sow
- Kellogg works with suppliers to phase out controversial glyphosate, Supply Chain Dive
- 22% of Kellanova shareholders back action on pesticides (April 2024), As You Sow
- Clean Air Act Section 112 Presidential Exemption Information, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- Proclamation 10914, Regulatory Relief for Certain Stationary Sources To Promote American Energy, Office of the President, in the Federal Register
- Trump Exempted Some of the Nation's Biggest Polluters From Air Quality Rules. All It Took Was an Email., ProPublica, co-published with Gray Television/InvestigateTV (Mark Olalde, 8 May 2026)
- Corporate Advocacy on the UN Global Plastics Treaty, 2025 Update, InfluenceMap
- Fossil Fuel and Petrochemical Lobbyists Overrun Plastics Treaty Negotiations (INC-5.2), Center for International Environmental Law
6 campaigns on record
Disclose the risks pesticide use (including glyphosate) in its agricultural supply chain poses to the company, after Kellanova dropped Kellogg's earlier glyphosate phase-out commitment following the corporate split.
Result: 22% of shareholders voted in favor The proposal was precatory (advisory and non-binding).
we found no documented change at Kellanova following this vote
Issue a report examining the risks and opportunities of adopting reusable packaging systems to cut single-use plastic packaging.
Result: Withdrawn before a vote after the company agreed. As You Sow withdrew the proposal in March 2023 once McDonald's pledged to evaluate and report on the opportunities and risks of switching to reusable packaging, including the effects on single-use plastic and other single-use packaging and on the environment.
McDonald's said in dialogue after the filing that it would publish a comprehensive study in early 2024, and agreed the report would assess what opportunities and risks full-scale reuse poses to the industry and the environment, measured against the System Change Scenario of the Breaking the Plastic Wave report, and might set out possible new actions and goal frameworks for the company on reusables. Whether that study was published has not been settled here: no published McDonald's reuse study was located in a search made in September 2026.
Amazon, Yum Brands, Kroger face upcoming shareholder votes on circular packaging, Waste Dive
Report on actions PepsiCo could take to reduce its reliance on single-use plastic packaging, including strengthening refillable-bottle goals.
Result: withdrawn after company agreement
PepsiCo agreed to set a time-bound goal by the end of 2022 for a percentage of its beverage volume to be delivered through strategies that avoid or minimise single-use packaging: reusable and refillable bottles or containers, concentrates such as fountain drinks, prepare-at-home beverages such as its SodaStream subsidiary, and beverages sold in powder or drop form. The company said it would develop the goal from assessments of system capabilities, market opportunities and consumer preferences, and announce its size by year end.
Reduce plastic packaging used to ship orders and report on the company's plans to do so.
With Green Century Capital Management
Result: Not approved, but the closest a shareholder proposal came at this meeting. Amazon's certified results for the annual meeting of 25 May 2022 report 181,296,823 for, 189,313,134 against, 2,260,572 abstaining and 53,465,310 broker non-votes on the proposal requesting a report on packaging materials. That is 48.9 percent in favour counting only votes for and against, or 48.6 percent if abstentions are included in the base. Grist reports the yes votes came from investors holding roughly $387 billion of Amazon shares and that the proposal drew more support than any other environmentally oriented shareholder proposal in the company's history. The proposal was advisory: a shareholder resolution of this kind does not bind the company.
Amazon reported in July 2023 that it had used 85,916 metric tons of single-use plastic to ship orders in 2022, an 11.6 percent fall from 97,222 metric tons in 2021, and said it would phase out plastic mailers. As You Sow attributes those reductions to its dialogue with the company and to the proposals it filed over three years, while saying Amazon has still not committed to a defined set of future reduction goals or to a date for phasing out all plastic mailers.
Nearly half of Amazon shareholders agree: Time to cut back on plastic packaging, Grist
Issue a report by December 2021 estimating how much plastic packaging Kroger releases into the environment and describing the company's strategy to reduce plastic packaging.
Result: 45.6% of votes cast were in favor The proposal was precatory (advisory and non-binding).
Kroger later pledged that its Our Brands packaging would be 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2030 and launched a mail-back recycling program with TerraCycle's Loop, but As You Sow found the company set no recycled-content goal for plastics and had cut its earlier 20% recycled-content pledge in half.
Kroger: Sustainable Packaging Policies for Plastics, As You Sow
Eliminate the use of glyphosate as a pre-harvest drying (desiccant) agent on wheat and oats in Kellogg's supply chain.
Result: withdrawn after company agreement Resolutions were filed in both 2017 and 2020 and were resolved by a negotiated company commitment rather than a vote.
Kellogg said it is working with suppliers to phase out glyphosate as a pre-harvest drying agent on wheat and oats by the end of 2025, and noted the practice is not widespread in its global supply chains, including in the United States, where using glyphosate this way has not been approved.
Kellogg works with suppliers to phase out controversial glyphosate, Supply Chain Dive
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is JUST Capital's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.