Regardless of rising public scrutiny and authorized challenges over its use of plastic, Coca-Cola seems to be transferring backwards on packaging sustainability.
Earlier this decade, the soda large publicly pledged to lower its use of virgin plastic and increase the share of its drinks bought in reusable containers. However in a weblog publish final week, the corporate quietly dropped these targets. Coca-Cola’s “advanced” plastics technique now appears to relaxation nearly fully on cleansing up current plastic waste and recycling — although its recycling targets are actually weaker than they have been earlier than.
“We stay dedicated to constructing long-term enterprise resilience and incomes our social license to function,” the corporate’s govt vice chairman for sustainability, Bea Perez, mentioned in a press release.
Coke’s announcement is a part of a broader development of corporations strolling again or falling wanting their plastics sustainability targets. Final month, a progress report from the nonprofit Ellen MacArthur Basis — a nonprofit that advocates for a “round economic system” by which sources are conserved — confirmed that a whole lot of corporations had collectively fallen wanting the progress wanted to satisfy a variety of voluntary plastics commitments by 2025.
The businesses pledged to chop virgin plastic use by 18 % under 2018 values, however have solely achieved a 3 % discount as of 2023. They mentioned they might completely eradicate polyvinyl chloride — a kind of plastic suspected of leaching hazardous chemical substances — however have solely used 1 % much less by weight. They promised to extend the quantity of reusable packaging they supplied, however have made no progress towards that purpose.
Sam Pearse, plastics marketing campaign supervisor for the nonprofit Story of Stuff — which advocates for reusable alternate options to single-use plastics — mentioned the development suggests corporations aren’t critical about their plastics targets. A pledge is “this factor they may attempt to do if the celebs align, … but it surely’s not core to the enterprise operation.
“When you begin seeing that cycle quite a lot of instances, it’s exhausting to not be skeptical concerning the intention,” he added.
Coca-Cola is among the largest meals and beverage corporations on the planet. It sells merchandise in additional than 200 nations and territories worldwide (there are solely 195 United Nations-recognized nations) and final yr made $46 billion in web income. Along with its eponymous soda, the corporate additionally makes Dasani bottled water, Fanta sodas, and Sprite, in addition to some 200 different meals and beverage manufacturers.
Coca-Cola additionally makes quite a lot of plastic packaging: about 3.5 million metric tons of it per yr, nearly fully out of fossil fuels. A lot of this plastic leads to the surroundings. For six years operating, Coca-Cola has been named the “prime international plastic polluter,” based mostly on seaside cleanups coordinated by the nonprofit Break Free From Plastic. Final yr, volunteers collected some 500,000 items of plastic trash and recognized Coca-Cola branding on about 33,000 of them, unfold out throughout 40 nations.
“In every one of many cleanups that we manage — not solely seaside cleanups however in mangroves, rivers, mountains, and volcanoes — we discover Coca-Cola bottles,” mentioned Cecilia Torres, the director of an Ecuadorian ocean safety nonprofit referred to as Mingas por el Mar, which participates in Break Free From Plastic’s international model audit. She mentioned Coca-Cola’s plastics are even reaching the distant Galápagos Islands, the place they might be introducing invasive species.
Coca-Cola and Sprite bottles from a 2022 model audit by Break Free From Plastic. Courtesy of Break Free From Plastic
Scientists and advocates say that changing single-use plastics with reusable alternate options and capping virgin plastic manufacturing are two of the most effective methods to scale back plastic-related emissions and air pollution. If reuse offset the necessity for simply 10 % of single-use plastic consumption, analysis suggests it may halve the quantity of waste reaching the ocean. In the meantime, scientists say capping virgin plastic manufacturing is probably the most easy method of decreasing plastic air pollution — and probably extra fascinating than attempting to spice up the recycling price, as a result of recycled plastics can include a larger quantity and better focus of hazardous chemical substances. Final month, a examine within the journal Science discovered {that a} international plastic manufacturing cap would additionally lead to larger greenhouse fuel emissions reductions by 2050 than seven different insurance policies, together with targets for extra recycling and recycled content material.
Coca-Cola made its two pledges on virgin plastics discount and reusable packaging in 2020 and 2022, respectively. The pledges adopted resolutions filed by shareholder advocacy teams, organizations that purchase shares in corporations to be able to affect company administration.
The 2020 decision, written by Inexperienced Century Capital Administration, highlighted the “reputational, market, regulatory, operational, local weather and aggressive dangers” stemming from Coca-Cola’s affiliation with plastic air pollution. It requested Coca-Cola to set a purpose for decreasing its plastic use — which Coca-Cola did, in alternate for the withdrawal of the decision earlier than it was offered to shareholders. Coca-Cola mentioned that, by 2025, it could use 3 million metric tons much less virgin plastic “derived from nonrenewable sources.”
The second decision was filed in 2021 by Inexperienced Century and one other shareholder advocacy group referred to as As You Sow. It made the same argument and resulted in Coca-Cola’s pledge to promote 25 % of its beverage quantity in a reusable format — whether or not in glass or plastic bottles, or from soda fountains — by 2030.
When Coca-Cola made its reuse pledge in 2022, it was hailed as a first-of-its-kind, industry-leading strategy to the plastics downside. The corporate already had a strong reuse community, notably in South America, the place it had invested a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in designing a refillable bottle that may very well be used throughout its numerous manufacturers, and within the infrastructure wanted to gather, clear, and refill bottles. As of final yr, returnable glass and sturdy plastic bottles represented greater than half of the corporate’s beverage gross sales in 20 markets.
After asserting the pledge, the corporate launched reuse applications in greater markets. In North America, Coca-Cola final yr launched a partnership with the corporate r.Cup to serve its drinks in reusable plastic cups at sports activities and leisure venues. It was working with A&W Canada on an “exchangeable cup” program, and mentioned it was distributing beverage dispensers as a substitute of merchandising machines at some theme parks and college campuses.
In El Paso, Texas, Coca-Cola has been working since 2022 on a pilot program to promote extra of its drinks in returnable glass bottles. As soon as empty, the bottles are despatched throughout the border to Mexico to be cleaned, after which they’re returned to the U.S. to be refilled and bought once more.
Roberto Machado Noa / LightRocket through Getty Photographs
Coca-Cola promoted its reuse initiatives in quarterly earnings stories as lately as this July, and it talked about its quantitative goal to spice up refillable choices in communications from late 2023. However as of late November, each the reuse pledge and the virgin plastic pledge had disappeared from parts of the corporate’s web site, together with the homepage of the Coca-Cola’s World With out Waste initiative, which launched in 2018 and claimed to help a “round economic system” for packaging.
In its weblog publish, the corporate additionally introduced much less stringent benchmarks for recycling. Coca-Cola now plans to make 30 to 35 % of its plastic packaging out of recycled supplies by 2035, as a substitute of fifty % by 2030. And as a substitute of constructing 100% of its packaging recyclable by 2025 and amassing one bottle or can for every one bought, Coca-Cola now says it would “assist guarantee the gathering” of simply 70 to 75 % of the variety of bottles and cans it produces, additionally by 2035.
The brand new strategy is “knowledgeable by learnings gathered by a long time of labor in sustainability, periodic evaluation of progress, and recognized challenges,” in accordance with the weblog publish.
Coke has softened its recycling targets.
| Focus space | Earlier purpose | New purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Recycling | Make 100% of packaging recyclable by 2025; acquire or recycle one bottle or can for every bought | Assist guarantee assortment of 70-75% of the equal variety of bottles and cans launched into the market yearly by 2035 |
| Recycled content material | Use 50% recycled content material by 2030 | Make 35-40% of major packaging (plastic, glass, aluminum) out of recycled materials by 2035 |
| Reuse/refill | Serve 25% of whole beverage quantity in reusable codecs by 2030 | None |
| Virgin plastic | Scale back use of virgin plastic derived from non-renewable sources by cumulative 3 million metric tons between 2020 and 2025 | None |
Supply: The Coca-Cola Co.
Amy Larkin, founding father of a corporation referred to as PR3 that’s growing requirements for reuse programs, declined to touch upon Coca-Cola particularly, however she mentioned that shopper manufacturers usually have issue constructing reuse infrastructure as a result of they “proceed to consider it as a brand new product line, as a substitute of a system that they need to develop.”
“Most of those corporations have deployed reuse pilots on their very own. That received’t work,” she added. As a substitute, Larkin thinks corporations have to collaborate to construct strong reuse programs that work with a number of manufacturers. “Any new system takes time, consideration, and early funding.”
Matt Littlejohn, senior vice chairman of strategic initiatives for the nonprofit Oceana, mentioned Coca-Cola’s transfer away from its reuse goal appeared to not have resulted from exterior elements, like a scarcity of curiosity among the many public. “That is an energetic determination by Coca-Cola administration that, for no matter purpose, they’re not going to pursue the technique that really ends in them utilizing much less plastic.”
Coca-Cola declined to clarify to Grist why it determined to scrap its reuse goal as a substitute of revising it downward, because it did with its recycling targets. It’s attainable that Coca-Cola was responding to anti-greenwashing laws accredited by the European Union earlier this yr, which broadly prohibits companies from making environmental claims which are out of sync with their enterprise practices. Since Coca-Cola made its reuse pledge in 2022, it has truly decreased the fraction of its drinks bought in a reusable or refillable format, with progress in single-use classes outstripping its reuse efforts. And it elevated virgin plastic use between 2018 and 2023. In a press release to Grist, a Coca-Cola spokesperson acknowledged that “legal guidelines and insurance policies within the markets we function in are all the time altering.”
Based on a survey launched earlier this yr by the Swiss consulting agency South Pole, 70 % of “climate-conscious” corporations are being quiet about their local weather and environmental commitments to be able to adjust to new laws and keep away from public scrutiny. South Pole outlined a “climate-conscious” firm as one with greater than 1,000 workers and a sustainability-focused director-level place — a definition that Coca-Cola meets.
Overpromising might create regulatory dangers, however pledging too little dangers backlash from traders and customers, as demonstrated by the resolutions from Inexperienced Century and As You Sow that led Coca-Cola to create its reuse and virgin plastic targets within the first place.
Hector Retamal / AFP through Getty Photographs
“That Coca-Cola has deserted its refillable dedication is alarming, regrettable, and regressive,” mentioned Frances Fairhead-Stanova, a shareholder advocate for Inexperienced Century. She added that the corporate is “prone to face heightened regulatory and reputational dangers because of its new strategy to plastic packaging, which is unduly reliant on recyclability over plastic discount and reuse.”
Kelly McBee, round economic system supervisor for As You Sow, additionally mentioned Coca-Cola’s new deal with recycling alone is “an ineffective technique” for tackling plastic air pollution. “In impact,” she added, “Coke is embracing the linear ‘take-make-waste’ mindset that created the worldwide plastic air pollution disaster within the first place.”
Coca-Cola’s deadline for submitting shareholder resolutions was November 18, so it’s too late to file one asking the corporate to reinstate its reuse goal this yr. Fairhead-Stanova and McBee declined to say whether or not their organizations would file any plastics-related resolutions with Coca-Cola subsequent yr.
A spokesperson for Coca-Cola mentioned the corporate intends to “proceed to speculate to develop the usage of refillable packaging in markets the place infrastructure is in place to help this essential a part of the corporate’s portfolio.” In addition they mentioned that the usage of recycled content material and extra environment friendly packaging may not directly cut back the corporate’s use of virgin plastic.
In the meantime, Coca-Cola is already going through a slew of authorized challenges associated to its plastics use. Final month, Los Angeles County sued the corporate, together with PepsiCo, for contributing to plastic air pollution and for implying that plastic bottles may very well be recycled an infinite variety of instances. In a press launch, the county particularly referred to as out the beverage corporations for making “false guarantees that they might enhance the usage of recycled plastic by sure percentages and eradicate the usage of virgin plastic.”
Based on the Ellen MacArthur Basis report, Coca-Cola has solely elevated the fraction of its plastic packaging constituted of recycled content material by 8 share factors, half of the 16 share factors it had pledged by 2025. PepsiCo additionally fell wanting its recycled content material purpose by 15 share factors.
The Ellen MacArthur Basis didn’t reply to Grist’s request for remark. A PepsiCo spokesperson mentioned that the corporate “made progress on decreasing virgin plastic use in 2023 year-over-year” — though its 2023 use was six % greater than in 2020 — and referred to as this problem “a posh problem.”
Town of Baltimore filed its personal grievance towards Coca-Cola and different meals and beverage corporations earlier this yr for “creating merchandise that they know will trigger important environmental harms.” The nonprofit Earth Island Institute has two ongoing lawsuits towards the corporate: one over the “public nuisance” created by Coca-Cola’s plastic air pollution, and one other over the way in which the corporate represents itself as “sustainable and environmentally pleasant.”
In Europe final yr, an umbrella group representing 44 shopper advocacy organizations submitted a formal grievance to European Union authorities over Coca-Cola, Danone, Nestlé, and different corporations’ illustration of their plastic bottles as sustainable. They’re nonetheless awaiting a response.
In the meantime, advocacy teams that celebrated Coca-Cola’s erstwhile plastics sustainability targets are coming to phrases with the company’s about-face. Pearse and his crew on the Story of Stuff had been engaged on a brief movie about Coca-Cola’s refillable pilot program in El Paso — they launched the movie this week — and it got here as a shock to them that the corporate was abandoning its reuse goal.
“I’d wish to see extra of the left hand speaking to the proper,” Pearse instructed Grist. “If you’re actually critical about these sorts of pledges, it is advisable make sure that they run by the way in which {that a} enterprise is doing its practices and operations.”
