The client
Minderoo Foundation and its partners prepared the inaugural Plastic Waste Makers Index in 2021. Working closely with a number of global partners, including Systemiq and Planet Tracker, Neural Alpha led the development of the novel plastics supply chain mapping behind the index.
The challenge
The task was to turn raw, noisy and incomplete global plastics supply chain data into a robust model ready for data analysis and data science techniques, to reveal key trends, risks and opportunities for improving sustainability outcomes.
What we built
Working with large volumes of supply chain, physical asset and ownership data, Neural Alpha developed a unique supply chain model to aggregate several years of supply chain data into total production volumes and export flows for global plastics producers.
We used our data engineering and matching capabilities to take millions of raw supply chain records and transform them into a robust dataset, linked with waste and other datasets, to produce a defensible and reconciled database for analysis.
Raw export and import volumes were reconciled against UN Comtrade data to establish an accurate baseline prior to matching. Using a novel constrained matching technique, we were then able to match and resolve tens of thousands of different global company names to legal entities in dozens of national company registries. The legal entities were then extended into corporate groups to link to ultimate parents and Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) using ownership data, and financial exposures were then calculated using equity and debt holdings data.
The results
Neural Alpha delivered a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) dataset for analysis, external audit and assurance in a matter of weeks, leaving a reasonable period for the data analysis and research behind the report’s key findings. Key findings of the 2021 report included:
- It’s a sovereign problem with more than 30% of the sector’s shareholdings by value held by governments
- In 2019 just 20 polymer producers accounted for more than half of all single-use plastic waste globally and the top 100 accounted for 90%
- Twenty institutional asset managers hold over $300bn worth of shares in polymer producers
That’s why the Plastic Waste Makers Index, prepared by the Minderoo Foundation and its partners, comes at such a critical time. As awareness of the toll of plastic pollution has grown, the petrochemical industry has told us it’s our own fault and has directed attention toward behaviour change from end-users of these products - rather than addressing the problem at its source!
