18 February 2022
Coca-Cola surprised the world with more stringent goals about the plastic bottles in which it sells its drinks. The drinks giant said that it intends to sell at least 25% of its brands in refillable and returnable glass or plastic bottles by 2030. Environmental organisations, that have pressured Coca-Cola for years to invest in refill systems and deposit systems, responded with cautious optimism. Not only is 2030 still far off and the target only covers one-quarter of the bottles, but there are also other reasons for scepticism and concern.
Coca-Cola’s announcement comes on the eve of UNEA-2, where the member states of the United Nations will decide whether to introduce a binding international plastic treaty to tackle the plastic soup more effectively.
BIGGEST POLLUTER IN THE WORLD
Coca-Cola, with more than 500 brands, sells more than 100 billion plastic bottles every year. This equates to 200,000 bottles a minute. Of these, an unrecoverable large part ends up in the environment, and definitely in places where waste is not collected and processed. For the fourth consecutive year, the conglomerate has been declared the world’s biggest polluter, bigger than numbers two (PepsiCo) and three (Unilever) put together.
Coca-Cola is under growing societal pressure to take responsibility for its share of the plastic pollution. Its new goal is not Coca-Cola’s first attempt to present itself as sustainable and responsible through all sorts of promises. The question is whether this is the right goal at the right time.
TRACK RECORD OF BROKEN PROMISES
In the same week that Coca-Cola made its pledge, the American NGO Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) issued a critical report about the drinks industry entitled ‘The Big Beverage Playbook for avoiding responsibility’. The report covers the box of tricks that drinks giants use to skirt around their responsibility and to decrease costs.
One such trick is making pledges that are then not achieved. Coca-Cola has a very poor track record here. It has not achieved even one of its sustainability pledges. In 1990 it promised to use an average of 25% of recyclates in its PET bottles. Now, three decades later, that percentage is only 10%. Over the years the recyclate goal has been constantly readjusted, the last time as part of Coca-Cola’s World Without Waste initiative. It now says that in 2030, its bottles will be made of 50% recycled material.
The CLF report notes that goals and promises are always voluntary and that there are no sanctions if a goal is not achieved. If it does not achieve one of its goals, the company blames uncontrollable external factors such as consumers who do not recycle enough.
WHAT DOES REFILLABLE MEAN?
The environmental movement has called on Coca-Cola for years to make its bottles returnable through a deposit system and to then refill them. Bottles should be used several times, not just once. In its pledge, Coca-Cola speaks of “refillable/returnable glass or plastic bottles, or in refillable containers through traditional fountain or Coca-Cola Freestyle dispensers.”
But what does this mean? If technically 25% of the bottles are refillable in 2030, but this does not happen in practice, would it be because the necessary infrastructure is not there for example? Will plastic bottles be refilled or will they be made from collected old bottles? What the pledge is missing are:
- a clear definition of the terms used
- transparency about all the details, including how, where and when the target will be achieved
- the degree to which this goal will lead to an absolute reduction in the use of plastic
- the expected impact on the plastic soup.
EXPRESSING SUPPORT FOR A BOTTLE DEPOSIT SYSTEM IS MUCH MORE CREDIBLE
In the battle against plastic pollution, a deposit system is a financial incentive for consumers to return their used bottles. It is a proven highly effective tool. However, for decades Coca-Cola has used any means possible to work against the introduction of a deposit system because of the higher operational costs that they bring.
In Europe, Coca-Cola had to give up its opposition to a deposit system when the European Commission determined that all member states must collect at least 90% of the bottles by 2029. That legal target can only be achieved if there is a deposit system on the bottles as consumers then really do return their empty bottles.
Plastic Soup Foundation calls on Coca-Cola to express its unconditional support for the introduction of bottle deposits across the world and to actively support this action instead of sabotaging it. Only then will it become credible that Coca-Cola actually does clean and refill the used bottles. And then we would also not need to wait till 2030 to see what may have been achieved.
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