2026 has got off to a terrible start for the Amazon rainforest. On 5 January, the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (ABIOVE), the industry group representing the largest soybean traders in Brazil, announced plans to withdraw from the Amazon Soy Moratorium. The move confirms the worst fears of the global movement to protect the Amazon: the world’s single most successful zero-deforestation policy is hanging by a thread.

A Landmark Agreement is Fraying

The Amazon Soy Moratorium is not just another corporate pledge; it is widely considered one of the most successful zero-deforestation agreements in history. 

In 2006, Greenpeace International exposed how soy grown on recently deforested land was being used as animal feed – ultimately supplying major brands like McDonald’s and other global fast-food and supermarket chains. The resulting global outrage led commodity traders, working with civil society groups led by Greenpeace, to establish the Soy Moratorium – a ground-breaking agreement that halted the expansion of soy onto newly deforested land in the Amazon.

Before the pact was signed, up to 30% of new soy fields in the Amazon were created by clearing primary rainforest. Today, thanks to the soy agreement, that figure has plummeted, with less than 4% of soy being planted in deforested areas as of July 2025 and has enabled Brazil to triple its soy production without torching its most vital ecosystem, proving that farming can be done in a way that does not harm our forests.

The catalyst for today’s crisis is a new law introduced by the state legislature of Mato Grosso, Brazil’s soybean capital, that came into force on 1 January 2026. This legislation – pushed by Brazil’s powerful agribusiness lobby – strips tax benefits from any company that participates in any voluntary environmental agreement that goes beyond Brazilian environmental legislation, of which the Soy Moratorium is the most prominent example. 

Although ABIOVE’s statement does not make it clear which traders are following the association’s decision, most of its members’ logos have been removed from the agreement’s official website, including industry giants and multinationals such as ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus.

By choosing to prioritise these tax breaks over their sustainability commitments, these companies are effectively hollowing out a historic shield for the Amazon. While ABIOVE claims that members will continue to monitor their supply chains individually, history shows that voluntary, individual promises rarely match the rigour or ambition of a unified, transparent moratorium.

What is at stake?

If the Moratorium collapses, the consequences will be global. Without it, producers only have to follow Brazil’s Forest Code, an important piece of legislation which nonetheless allows them to clear forest from 20% of their land – or more in some cases – in the Amazon biome. If this happens, estimates suggest we could see a 30% surge in deforestation by 2045.

It would also have major implications for businesses and consumers around the world. The Soy Moratorium enabled companies to confidently promise their customers that the soy in their supply chains are free of Amazon deforestation. This is why so many major brands have supported the Soy Moratorium for decades – and why over a dozen leading European supermarket chains including Lidl, Aldi and Tesco recently urged members to publicly reaffirm their commitment to the pact.

Scientists warn that the Amazon is already reaching a “tipping point”. If we lose just a few more percentage points of forest cover, the entire ecosystem could collapse into a dry, fire-prone savannah. This would release billions of tonnes of carbon, making it impossible to meet our global climate targets. There could not be more at stake.

Take Action: The World is Watching

Greenpeace Brasil is already supporting a legal challenge against the Mato Grosso law in Brazil’s Supreme Court, arguing that it is unconstitutional to deny tax benefits as a way of punishing those who do more to protect forests. But we also need international pressure. 

The vast majority of soy is used as animal feed: that is, it is used to produce the meat on dinner tables around the world. At a time when governments around the world are failing to protect citizens and nature from corporate exploitation, more than ever we need people to speak up. We need to raise our voices and make clear to soy traders and international brands that we won’t accept products linked to the destruction of the world’s largest rainforest.

The Amazon belongs to all of us, not just the agribusiness lobby. Let’s make sure its best defence stays standing.

Joe Evans is a Global Comms Lead with Greenpeace UK.

Davos/Vienna – Ahead of next week’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Greenpeace CEE has published a new analysis of private jet traffic linked to the event. The report, Davos in the Sky, analysed private jet flights to and from Davos-area airports over the past three years before, during, and after the WEF, and found a sharp rise in private jet activity, even though overall attendance at the forum has remained broadly stable.

Herwig Schuster, European campaigner with Greenpeace Austria, said: ”It’s pure hypocrisy that the world’s most powerful and super-rich elite discuss global challenges and progress in Davos, while they literally burn the planet with the emissions of their private jets. The time for action is now. Governments must act to curb polluting luxury flights and tax the super-rich for the damage they cause.”

Key findings of the new report Davos in the Sky [1]

• During the week of the 2025 World Economic Forum, 709 additional private jet flights were identified at airports near Davos – roughly equivalent to almost one private jet flight per four WEF participants. 
• There is a 10% increase from 2024, when 628 flights were recorded, and a threefold rise compared with 2023, which saw 227 flights.[2] The increase was not driven by higher participation but by repeated arrivals and departures. In 2024 and 2025, many private jets flew in and out of Davos multiple times during the same week, effectively turning the area into a private jet shuttle hub for Davos participants.
• Greenpeace CEE calculates that around 70% of the private jet routes could have been travelled by train within a day (or with a night train and connection train).[3]

Greenpeace supports the UN Tax Convention (UNFCITC) negotiations toward new global tax rules through 2027 and urges governments to implement new global tax rules on extreme wealth, including a levy on luxury aviation such as private jets and first and business class flights. 

ENDS

Notes: 

[1] The report Davos in the Sky was written by Berlin-based T3 Think Tank. The key findings were selected by Greenpeace CEE based on data in the report.

[2] In 2023, a French air traffic controllers strike during the week of WEF 2023 may have affected flights into and out of Switzerland.

[3] The Greenpeace CEE calculation is based on countries of origin to destination (Davos Dorf railway station) and draws on data from the T3 report referenced in this press release.

Contacts:

Herwig Schuster, European campaigner, Greenpeace Austria: +43 664 4319214 , herwig.schuster@greenpeace.org

Christine Gebeneter, European comms lead, Greenpeace Austria: +43 664 8403807, christine.gebeneter@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace International Press Desk, +31 (0)20 718 2470 (available 24 hours), pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org

Only a few days into 2026, around 15 thousand cubic meters of drilling fluid leaked out of the well where Brazilian oil company Petrobrás has been drilling, near the Amazon River Basin. This area is well known for having an almost completely pristine ecosystem, that is still considered unexplored and home to the Great Amazon Reef.

According to the company, the leak was identified on 4 January 2026, at more than 9 thousand feet deep in the sea. Petrobrás announced a plan to halt activities for 15 days and stated that the fluid is composed of a mixture of solids, liquids and chemicals.

This is not an isolated incident but an alert, having been warned about in 2025 by a delegation formed by Greenpeace Brazil, local NGOs, Quilombolas, Indigenous movements and fishermen communities, in a filed lawsuit in the Federal Court against Brazilian Environmental Agency IBAMA, Petrobrás and the Brazilian State. The delegation requested the immediate suspension of activities and the cancellation of the operating license granted to Petrobras for exploration.

This latest leak has a direct relationship with the environmental risks pointed out during  the licensing process. An oil spill near the Amazon River Basin can be devastating to the delicate ecosystem of the region, and to the local communities who depend on a healthy ocean for their livelihoods. Information about the leak was taken to the lawsuit, in which the authors reiterate the urgency of an immediate action by the Federal Court in suspending the operating license.  

According to a lawyer from Greenpeace Brazil, between 1975 and 2014, operations of this type were responsible for 95.22% of the accidents recorded on drilling platforms and production in deep water. The impacts and risks are obvious, so the judicial measure of suspension of activities is necessary, based on the principles of prevention and precaution.

Oil exploration in the Amazon is a real, predictable and an avoidable risk. Still, drilling continues, even with insufficient environmental impact studies, without consultation with impacted communities and without assessment of climate impacts. It’s time for fossil fuel phaseout and a just transition that puts people, dignity, and a fossil-free future first.

Respect the Amazon

Ask political leaders to act on their promises to stop Amazon destruction.

Join the Movement

Marlon Marinho is a Multimedia Editor with Greenpeace International. 

In 2025, journalist Saabira Chaudhuri released Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic, an investigation into how global consumer goods companies built entire business models around disposability. One chapter in particular stands out: how Unilever helped turn the single-use sachet into a dominant packaging format and how that decision continues to fuel plastic pollution on a global scale.

As negotiations toward a Global Plastics Treaty intensify, the insights in Consumed remain urgently relevant, and increasingly uncomfortable for Unilever.

How Unilever drove the sachet crisis

A business model engineered around disposability

Chaudhuri shows how Unilever’s India arm industrialised the sachet, transforming a small local innovation into a global mass-market strategy. Sachets unlocked ‘previously unreachable’ low-income markets by enabling small, frequent purchases — turning low-cost items into a multi-billion-unit sales engine.

This wasn’t primarily about meeting consumer demand. It was about creating a profitable disposable business model.

Marketing that reshaped behaviour

Unilever’s push didn’t stop with packaging. The company invested heavily in rural outreach: mobile cinema vans, in-home demos, and campaigns presenting branded shampoo as ‘modern’ and aspirational. Traditional low-waste practices were displaced by single-use products designed to be thrown away after use. The company invested heavily in marketing tactics, and unfortunately they worked. 

The fallout: billions of sachets with nowhere to go

Once sachets took off, the environmental consequences were immediate and severe. Tens of billions of sachets are used annually in India alone – almost none recycled, because they were never designed to be. Waste accumulates in waterways, drainage systems, and informal dumps, disproportionately affecting communities without formal waste services.

Corporate dependence on sachets

Chaudhuri argues that brands like Unilever are now locked into disposability. Despite sustainability promises, the company continues to rely on sachets for volume and margins, even as the pollution becomes impossible to ignore.

Greenpeace International’s 2023 Unilever Uncovered report found the company was on track to sell around 53 billion sachets in 2023 – 1,700 every second – making it the world’s biggest corporate seller of plastic sachets. What’s more: less than 0.2% of Unilever’s plastic packaging is reusable, demonstrating how far its business remains from a genuinely circular model.

So where is Unilever in its sachet journey, now? 

The company has so far…

Scaled a packaging system it knew lacked any viable end-of-life solution
Normalised sachets through aggressive marketing and behavioural engineering
Exported that model to markets across Asia and beyond
Lobbied against government policy like sachet bans
Continued to rely heavily on sachets, despite public pressure
Acknowledged that sachets need addressing, dating back over a decade
Made some bold statements about seeking solutions
Invested in pilot reuse and refill projects and R&D to test alternatives
🆇 Mapped out its path to transition away from sachets
🆇 Shown true accountability for the widespread harm it has caused to communities and ecosystems

For a company that positions itself as a sustainability leader, the pace of progress towards real solutions to this massive social, environmental and reputational disaster needs to be faster. Sachet and single-use plastic packaging pollution is not a new problem. Unilever s customers, impacted communities, and the public have waited long enough for something better. 

The real alternative: Reuse is already working

While Consumed explains how the world ended up awash in sachets, communities are demonstrating what genuine solutions look like.

In Manila, Philippines, neighbourhood stores are already operating as reuse and refill hubs, offering affordable and accessible alternatives to sachets. These systems deliver consumer savings and retailer benefits while dramatically reducing waste. A pilot project in India yielded similar results replacing sachets with refillable shampoo bottles allowing access to refill services. This replicable initiative that prevented over 5,000 sachets from entering the waste stream is being rolled out in other countries. Reuse pilots have existed and popped up all around the world. The reason they aren’t expanding further or thriving in certain contexts isn’t because there is a lack of interest or because the model flawed, but because corporations hadn’t set them up to succeed and haven’t invested meaningfully and across sectors to support the policy change and concerted effort needed to properly support the reuse revolution. 

Unilever must change course

Successful reuse and refill models show that sachets aren’t a necessity. They’re a corporate choice — one with deeply inequitable impacts. Saabira Chaudhuri’s Consumed exposes how Unilever helped build a throwaway system that communities worldwide are now forced to live with. Shifting off sachets could very well take just as much intention as convincing people to shift to them, but if Unilever has proven anything, it’s that it’s capable of shifting a market. 

The next chapter is up to Unilever’s leadership. To align with public expectations, environmental responsibility, and the direction of the Global Plastics Treaty, Unilever must:

• Commit to a global, time-bound phase-out of sachets
• Invest in reuse and refill systems at a scale matching its plastic footprint
• Support the reduction of out of control plastic production
• Shift innovation, design and marketing away from disposability
• Support a strong Global Plastics Treaty that prioritises reduction and reuse

Continuing the status quo is no longer credible or acceptable.

Anna Diski is a Senior Campaigner from Greenpeace UK. Sarah King is a Senior Strategist for the Plastic Free Future campaign from Greenpeace Canada.