AccScience Publishing / AJWEP / Volume 22 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.36922/ajwep.7089
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Examining how corporate environmental strategies influence the management of plastic pollution in food and beverage firms

Smangele Nzama1* ,  Odunayo M. Olarewaju2
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1 Department of Financial Accounting, Faculty of Accounting and Informatics, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa
2 Department of Accounting, College of Business and Management, Metro State University, Minnesota, United States of America
AJWEP 2025, 22(1), 83–98; https://doi.org/10.36922/ajwep.7089
Submitted: 6 December 2024 | Revised: 26 February 2025 | Accepted: 3 March 2025 | Published: 14 March 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

This research work aims to investigate how the corporate environmental strategy (CES) influences the management of plastic pollution. The focus of this study was a food and beverage (F&B) manufacturing firm in Durban, South Africa, because of their use of plastic items for packaging their products. Furthermore, when their product has served its function, it is disposed of, polluting the environment. There is a global worry as plastic waste is contaminating the land and marine environment. The pressure from different stakeholders for the accountability of those responsible has grown rapidly over the years. Quantitative information was gathered using a structured questionnaire to survey 128 F&B manufacturing companies’ managers in finance, management, factory, and accounting departments. The data were analyzed with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, and the Pearson correlation coefficient and regression analysis were used to examine the relationship between the variables. The findings revealed a positive relationship between CES and plastic pollution control (PPC). The R2 value of 0.149 was obtained from the linear regression analysis, suggesting that CES accounts for 14.9% of the variance in PPC. Thus, a significant linear relationship between the two variables was discovered.

Keywords
Environmental degradation
Environmental management accounting
Plastic waste
Plastic recycling
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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Asian Journal of Water, Environment and Pollution, Electronic ISSN: 1875-8568 Print ISSN: 0972-9860, Published by AccScience Publishing
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