For the second year in a row, Nestlé and Tim Hortons were the top companies behind branded plastic bottles, coffee cups, and lids and other plastic waste collected in shoreline cleanups across the country, Greenpeace Canada reported Tuesday.

Starbucks, McDonald’s and the Coca-Cola Company rounded out the top five of the environmental advocacy group’s list of plastic polluters.”Year to year the general order can shift a bit, but overall it’s those top usual suspects that we will keep seeing pop up,” said Sarah King, head of Greenpeace Canada’s oceans and plastics campaign.

“We know that all of the top five companies to date haven’t made significant efforts to reduce [plastic] production. Their products are going to be in the environment until that happens.”

King had noted previously that in many cases, the plastic waste is likely disposed of properly by consumers, but ends if the environment anyway, sometimes due to wind or storms.

The companies were named from 1,426 pieces of identifiably branded plastic out of 13,822 pieces of plastic waste collected and audited by 400 volunteers during shoreline cleanups between April and Sept. 21. The cleanups were organized by community groups participating in the global Break Free from Plastic movement in Halifax; Covehead, P.E.I.; Fredericton; Montreal; Toronto; Grimsby, Ont.; Broken Group Islands, B.C.; Vancouver and Victoria.

King said the primary goal of the brand audit was to “hold companies accountable for the plastic pollution problem that they continue to create.”

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