Last week, top global polluter Coca-Cola announced “voluntary environmental goals,” in which the company dropped its reuse targets and decreased its plastic recycling goals from previous initiatives.
In 2022, Coca-Cola had committed to making 25% of its packaging reusable by 2030. Alarmingly, in the new announcement, the reuse goal has disappeared. The Break Free From Plastic Movement has responded to the company’s latest announcement, emphasizing that Coca-Cola’s continued focus on failed recycling goals will do little to address the plastic crisis.
The company stated it has “evolved” its goals related to agriculture, climate, packaging, and water, and now aims to use 30–35% recycled plastic to make its bottles by 2035, and will partner to collect 70–75% of the equivalent number of bottles and cans produced annually. However in their World Without Waste Initiative launched in 2018, Coca-Cola had goals of 50% recycled materials by 2030, 100% recyclable packaging by 2025, and collection of the equivalent of 100% of bottles & cans sold.
Coca-Cola’s new move follows decades of greenwashing by the company, which has involved deceptively marketing its products as sustainable. This includes Coca-Cola’s disproportionate use of its glass bottle in its advertising, when in reality most of the packaging it produces—nearly 50%—is made of plastic. It additionally touts efforts to increase its plastic bottles’ recyclability as environmentally sustainable, while in reality recycling does not mitigate the harm that the company’s increasing production of plastic bottles creates. Coca-Cola has been taken to court over its greenwashed claims, as they mislead consumers and mask its culpability in plastic pollution.
Coca-Cola is the largest consumer-facing global seller of plastics, producing almost one-quarter of the world’s single-use PET plastic bottles. Coca-Cola plastic bottles, caps, and wrappers have been the most commonly found branded plastic pollution found in the environment for the last six years, according to Break Free From Plastic Brand Audits.
“Coca-Cola is moving backward, doubling down on plastic ‘recycling’ and failing to reduce the amount of plastic they are producing. Their inaction is unacceptable, especially as innovative companies scale up real solutions like reuse/refill systems and non-toxic, plastic-free materials. Coca-Cola has been named as the world’s #1 Top Plastics Polluter for 6 years in a row now. While advocates have been urging the company for years to bring back refillable systems—a real solution—the company is doubling down on plastic ‘recycling,’ which is not living up to its promises and is making the plastic pollution crisis worse. The Coca-Cola Company has spent years systematically dismantling bottle bills and fighting bottle deposit legislation in the U.S. and around the world.” — Dianna Cohen, Co-Founder and CEO, Plastic Pollution Coalition
Plastic “Recycling” is Greenwashing
Coca-Cola’s reliance on plastic “recycling” is problematic, as plastic “recycling” is widely recognized as greenwashing and does not actually solve plastic pollution. In fact, less than 9 percent of all plastic ever made has been recycled. Discarded plastic is far more commonly sent to incinerators and landfills. When plastic “recycling” actually happens, recycling plastic perpetuates its pollution by creating microplastics and emitting these and chemicals into air, soils, water, and our bodies when plastic is collected, ground up, and melted into pellets for future uses.
Bottles made of “recycled” plastic are also made with newly manufactured “virgin” plastic and additional chemical additives. And so plastic “recycling” actually drives up plastic and petrochemical production, and concentrates hazardous chemicals in recycled plastic items—making them even more harmful to human and environmental health.
As pressure to address the growing crisis of plastic pollution grows, many major plastic polluting companies are doubling down on plastic “recycling” as a solution. Plastic producers have long used recycling as part of their false narrative to shift the responsibility of dealing with its plastic pollution onto consumers. This delays and distracts from the real solutions to plastic pollution. Meanwhile,Coca-Cola and other major plastic-polluting corporations continue to lobby to block solutions that would reduce plastic pollution, actually undermining plastic recycling efforts, and instead support increased plastic production.
Plastic-Free Reuse and Refill are Real Solutions
Real solutions to plastic pollution require curbing plastic use altogether, by switching from plastic and other single-use materials to using those that can be safely reused and refilled, such as glass. The plastic-free reuse systems we need already existed before plastics were mass-produced for single-use. Ironically, Coca-Cola used to be a leader in the refill space, having in its early years as a company created a waste-free fountain drink system and deposit-return program that led to 96 percent of its glass bottles being reused.
About 40 percent of plastic produced today is used for single-use plastic packaging—including beverage bottles and food containers. Rapidly used and discarded single-use plastic packaging is among the most commonly found plastic items in our environment. And consumption of beverages and food in single-use plastic is one of the top ways that harmful microplastic, nanoplastic, and plastic chemicals enter our bodies.
Take Action
As Coca-Cola lowers the ambition of its previous commitments to reduce its plastic pollution, innovative, forward-thinking companies are scaling up real solutions with reuse and refill systems and non-toxic, plastic-free materials. Urge Coca-Cola to address its plastic pollution by bringing back plastic-free refillable glass bottles and supporting state-mandated refill quotas.
Would love to see local recycling plants and joined Sierra Club as volunteer to hopefully see some, but found they do not do that. Know any organizations who DO????? Would also like to see the landfills that Philadelphia uses, and it’s furnaces that burn other items. And keep wondering, if so little plastic is actually recycled, why does Philly keep sending our separate trash trucks to supposedly pick up recyclable materials, especially since is so expensive with the trucks and employees, and so many of my neighbors don’t “recycle” actually recyclable products.
Coke is say what ?