Plastic Banks

Companies in the plastic industry should have one of the longest risk registers of any sector. European retail banks financing plastics, along with their investors are financially exposed to these plastic-related risks. In this report, we use natural language processing to examine how major European retail banks talk about plastics and whether they consider plastic pollution risk as part of their lending criteria.

Our research suggests that most of the 30 largest European retail banks have minimal or non-existent policies specifically addressing (mitigating) plastic use, management, and reduction in their investment decisions. Financial institutions should be contemplating the probability of substantial liabilities and pushing investee banks to develop robust plastic-related policies for lending decisions.