Davos — Consumer products companies including Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola are emerging as new targets for global activism, with green groups blaming them for fouling the ocean with plastic and activists urging governments to regulate them. At the annual World Economic Forum last week, the bosses of these and other companies such as Unilever and PepsiCo have been on the defensive, in a way reminiscent of how coal and oil chiefs came under pressure over climate change in previous years. “I see parallels to coal,” Greenpeace executive director Jennifer Morgan said after she and Procter & Gamble boss David Taylor had a feisty exchange at a joint news conference at the forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. “It’s clear they are trying to not be regulated,” she said. The CEOs at Davos have vowed to cut their use of plastic packaging through a range of initiatives, including a joint recycling scheme unveiled during the forum. But Greenpeace used that announcement to call for plastic pa...
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