> Altria, a tobacco company, disagrees with the findings. In an email, a spokesperson said that the study data includes 80 countries, but its cigarette company Philip Morris USA, which owns brands such as Marlboro and Parliament, only operates in the United States, making it impossible for it to be responsible for 2 percent of the world’s branded plastic pollution.

Not sure about the other companies, but Coca-Cola could also try to weasel out of their responsibility this way: it's not widely known, but they operate on a franchise system, the actual regional bottlers operating independently from the Coca-Cola Company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coca-Cola_Company#Bottlers).