Another nationwide boycott of Walmart wrapped up last week, marking the second organized protest of the retail giant’s decision to backtrack on its diversity, equity and inclusion commitments.
But diversity isn’t the only principle the country’s largest retailer has shied away from since Donald Trump was elected president. Over the last six months, Walmart has also walked back multiple promises to reduce its massive impact on plastic waste and climate change—two crises that disproportionately harm Black and Brown communities.
The latest example, so far only reported on by trade publications, is that Walmart has quietly left the U.S. Plastics Pact, one of the world’s largest frameworks for addressing the unbelievable scourge of plastic pollution. The company’s exit was first reported by Packaging Dive.
Walmart is one of the world’s largest plastic polluters. Last year, a global study published last year in the journal Science Advances found that just 56 companies, including Walmart, were responsible for half of the world’s branded plastic pollution. The study collected and analyzed more than 1,870,000 pieces of plastic waste over five years across 84 countries.
Walmart had originally joined the U.S. Plastics Pact “to ensure that plastics never become waste by eliminating the plastics we don’t need, innovating to ensure that the plastics we do need are reusable, recyclable, or compostable, and circulating all the plastic items we use to keep them in the economy and out of the environment,” according to the company’s own words. Walmart did not respond to reporters’ requests to explain the exit.
The news of Walmart’s exit from the plastic pact came just two months after the company announced it would not meet its publicly-advertised goals for plastic pollution reduction and recycling—and had, in fact, increased its use of virgin plastic in private-brand packaging.