Coca-Cola is dramatically scaling back its plastic promises

Channel 3000 News/CNN ^ | December 4, 2024 | CNN Staff

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Coca-Cola is scaling back its packaging sustainability goals, igniting outrage from environmental activists.

The beverage company, which has long been criticized for being one of the world’s top producer of plastic pollutants, changed its “voluntary environmental goals” this week. It now aims to use 35% to 40% recycled material in its packaging by 2035 — a drastic reduction from its previous goal of 50% by 2030.

Coca-Cola explained in a press release that its “evolution is informed by learnings gathered through decades of work in sustainability, periodic assessment of progress and identified challenges.”

Coke is also changing its recycling goal. In 2018, Coca-Cola announced that by 2030 it wanted to recycle the plastic equivalent of every bottle it put out into the world. That’s been reduced to “ensure the collection” of 70% to 75% bottles and cans entering the market every year without naming an specific timeline.

Pollution from single-use plastic remains a major problem. A recent report from the Minderoo Foundation found that companies are producing record amounts of plastic despite stated efforts to be more sustainable. Plastic is problematic because it’s mostly made from polymers created from dangerous fossil fuels.

“We remain committed to building long-term business resilience and earning our social license to operate through our evolved voluntary environmental goals,” Bea Perez, executive vice president for sustainability and strategic partnerships for the Coca‑Cola Company, said in a press release. “These challenges are complex and require us to drive more effective and efficient resource allocation and work collaboratively with partners to deliver lasting positive impact.”

In response, environmental group Oceana bashed Coca-Cola for its “short-sighted, irresponsible” changes that are “worthy of widespread condemnation by its customers, its employees, its investors, and governments worried about the impact of plastics on our oceans and health.”

[Diana in Wisconsin]

In a statement, Break Free from Plastic that Coca-Cola’s “latest move is a masterclass in greenwashing, ditching previously announced reuse targets, and choosing to flood the planet with more plastic they can’t even collect and recycle effectively.”

[SaveFerris]

I’d like to teach
the world to drink
from glass bottles

Like we used to - ONLY because it tasted better

[Red Badger]

Go back to glass bottles. They ARE RECYLABLE AND WE WILL NEVER EVER RUN OUT OF SILICON DIOXIDE, AKA ‘SAND’, TO MAKE IT............

[cornfedcowboy]

Plastic recycling has been a huge bust. We only reuse about 10% of what we throw in the recycle bin.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

But it’s OK when Mother Government pollutes the planet with disposable face masks!

One example among dozens of articles on the topic:

Coronavirus: Disposable masks ‘causing enormous plastic waste’

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54057799

[ConservativeMind]

When recycled plastics can have other residues in them - imagine herbicide or toxic mineral container stock being reused for your beverage - you don't want your product to have these show up through a test by these same environmental / health non-profits.

It just becomes far safer to say you only use virgin plastic sources.

[Sacajaweau]

Plastic....created from “dangerous fossil fuels”.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

One may now argue with irony that “igniting outrage from environmental activists” is contributing to global warming.... :)

[9422WMR]

“far safer to say you only use virgin plastic sources.”
This is big oil. We will always need and have oil production.

[Sacajaweau]

Milk was so much better in glass bottles.

[xp38]

because of woke Coke has been dead to me for a while

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I’m working on replacing anything ‘plastic’ in the house with glass, and also buying less ‘stuff’ that comes in plastic packaging. It’s hard to do, but by the time I’m dead and thrown on the Compost Heap, I just might accomplish that, LOL!

Anyone know what the percentage is for recycling aluminum cans? We crush and save them and cash them in when we’re going to the scrap yard with other metals. The price fluctuates and is now down to .35 a pound. I remember .45 a number of years ago. We made a whole $12.00 - then spent it on lunch, LOL!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I’m not a soda drinker, but I DO like lime sparkling water in an aluminum can. ;)

[Dennis M.]

Coke’s recycled plastic bottles have a slight brown coloring. I suspect they are not selling.

[billorites]

While they’re at it could they please put the cocaine back in?

[Red Badger]

My wife saves her soda cans (I don’t drink sodas) and recycles them about every 6 months. She makes just enough to pay for the gas to go to the recycler!................

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Re: Milk in glass bottles.

When I was a kid, we bought our milk and all dairy items from Dutchland Dairy, an actual dairy-affiliated store; that’s all they sold.

One time Dad bought two gallons of milk in glass bottles and accidentally ‘clunked’ them together while he was putting them on the back floor of our VW Bug.

Even after he hosed out the car when we got home, the VW smelled like moldy cheese from that day forward.

And Young Diana learned some bad, BAD words that day, LOL!

[Cobra64]

Glass.

[wildcard_redneck]

What the watermelon Marxists are too stupid to realize because of their religion is that picking through trash for recyclables can never match the efficiency of bulk raw materials processing. Take the manufacturing of glass for instance. It is a lot simpler to find a large, clean sand deposit to turn into glass than it is to pick glass out of garbage at landfills either by robots or people.

And just what is so bad about using sand? We cannot eat it and as a resource we sure as hell are not going to run out of sand.

Furthermore, glass does eventually break down through chemical actions in the soil and if glass are out of artifacts are found they are quite beautiful.

Here is a collection of ancient Roman glass that has a beautiful patina from aging:

It is a hard fact that any glass left long enough in the ground becomes a valuable and beautiful artifact - these artifacts are not pollution by any definition.

Here is a picture of Kawaii's glass beach. Decades ago, the beach was used as a dumping ground for bottles, car parts, and other debris. Over time, the relentless power of the ocean transformed much of this discarded material into smooth, colorful fragments of glass. Again, the glass is inert, not toxic and more beautiful than the sand it came from.

In fact the glass beach is disappearing because people are stealing the beach glass because of its beauty.

Recycling is often a wasteful Marxist scam.

[ABN 505]

and glass is 100% recyclable.