Nearly two-thirds of bottles, cans and other branded packaging littering parks and beaches come from a “dirty dozen” of 12 firms, campaigners say.
Coca-Cola claimed the top spot for rubbish found in a nationwide litter-pick by 4,000 volunteers.
And with pubs shut for much of the past year and a half, beer cans and bottles surged into the top 10 of items found as lockdown drinkers took the party to parks and beaches instead.
Beer firm Anheuser-Busch InBev, which owns Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois, was in third place behind PepsiCo in the list compiled by the charity Surfers Against Sewage.
Bottles and cigarette butts also accounted for just under half of unbranded pollution, at 48%.
The charity recorded 9,998 branded items linked to 328 firms in its Million Mile Clean this year.
The 12 most frequently found brands were behind 65 per cent of packaging pollution, it found.
Walkers, McDonald’s, Cadbury, Tesco, Lucozade, Costa Coffee, Mars Wrigley and Haribo all made repeat appearances in this year’s list.
Hugo Tagholm of Surfers Against Sewage said: “Our annual Brand Audit has once again revealed the shocking volume of plastic and packaging pollution coming directly from big companies and some of their best-known brands.
“Serial offenders including Coca-Cola – which tops the leaderboard year on year as the worst offender – are still not taking responsibility.
“Legislation such as an ‘all-in’ deposit scheme needs to be introduced urgently, and governments need to hold these companies to account and turn off the tap of plastic and packaging pollution flooding the ocean.”
Conservation scientist Brendan Godley of Exeter University said: “Plastic packaging is polluting the ocean, impacting marine species and destroying habitats.”
He urged companies to reduce packaging pollution urgently “before it is too late”.
Coca-Cola said: “Like everyone, we care about reducing packaging waste and we don’t want to see any of our packaging end up where it shouldn’t.
"All of our packaging is 100 per cent recyclable and our aim is to get more of it back so that it can be recycled and turned into new packaging again.
“It’s disappointing to see any packaging being littered and that’s why we support the introduction of a well-designed Deposit Return Scheme which would encourage people to recycle rather than litter.”
The dirty dozen
How much of each of these company's products were found
- Coca-Cola - 16 per cent
- PepsiCo - nine per cent
- AB inBev - eight per cent
- McDonalds - five per cent
- Mondelez - five per cent
- Heineken - four per cent
- Carlsberg - three per cent
- Suntory - three per cent
- Haribo - three per cent
- Aldi - two per cent
- Others - 35 per cent
