Coca-Cola "evolves voluntary environmental goals"
So much for a decade's worth of promises.
The Coca-Cola Company recently announced “updated voluntary environmental goals,” rolling back promises they made in 2020 in their “World without Waste” initiative, which included making all their packaging recyclable by 2025 and using 50% recycled material by 2030. They even promised to bring back returnable bottles; according to the press release scrubbed from Coke’s site but found in the Wayback machine:
“By increasing our use of reusable packaging, we promote a circular economy as refillable containers have high levels of collection and are low-carbon footprint beverage containers, because the container collection is built into the beverage delivery model.”
But now, they are evolving those voluntary environmental goals.
"We remain committed to building long-term business resilience and earning our social license to operate through our evolved voluntary environmental goals," said Bea Perez, Executive Vice President and Global Chief Communications, Sustainability & Strategic Partnerships Officer at The Coca‑Cola Company. "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."
Writing in The New Climate, George Dillard is impressed.
“You’ve got to give it up to Ms. Perez — you don’t get to be Coca-Cola’s Executive Vice President and Global Chief Communications, Sustainability & Strategic Partnerships Officer without learning to deliver a statement so perfectly designed to lull the reader to sleep. What Perez seems to be saying is that it was expensive and difficult for Coca-Cola to meet its sustainability goals, so they aren’t going to meet them. They’ll move the goalposts with new, less ambitious promises and then, when they get closer to 2035, likely move them again.”
Actually, the Coca-Cola company has had a way with words for decades, sometimes hilariously. They ran this ad on the first Earth Day in 1970, noting that “the reusable, returnable bottle is the answer to an ecologist’s prayer. On average, it makes about fifty round trips before it’s through.”
Meanwhile, in 1969, Coca-Cola hired the Midwest Resources Institute to evaluate the environmental impacts of beverage packaging bottles, performing a “Resource and Environmental Profile Analysis” which is considered by many to be the first Life Cycle Assessment. The point of the exercise was to prove that disposable bottles had lower environmental impact than returnable glass bottles. While they are promoting glass on Earth Day, they are plotting to get rid of it.
In 2018, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey wrote “Why a world without waste is possible” about his commitment to reducing plastic waste. What a way with words!
By the time you’ve read this far, an estimated 40,000 plastic bottles have already made their way into our oceans. Together, we can reduce that number. Together, we might be able to make it zero. It will require hard work, dedication, and investment from many players, but I’m certain that the payoff for our planet, our communities, and our business will be well worth the price.
Now, let’s get to work.
Tim Brett, president of Coca-Cola Europe, also has a way words. He denies that the packaging is problematic; it’s the customer that’s the problem, telling Packaging News:
“I really believe strongly we don’t have a packaging problem. We have a waste problem and a litter problem. There is nothing wrong with packaging, as long as we get that packaging back, we recycle it and then we reuse it again. Packaging per se is not the problem. It’s the packaging that ends up in landfill or in litter. That sounds jarring when you first hear it and I am not denying there is a packaging waste problem – but it is not necessarily the material.”
Here is the company that essentially invented the single-use disposable bottle, then bought up and closed all the independent bottlers who used to sell us our Coke in returnable bottles. They then train us not to throw them out car windows with their "Keep America Beautiful” campaigns, then how to separate them into little piles and turn recycling into a religion. They took a very efficient circular system and turned it into a linear "take-make-waste" one that was much more profitable, thanks to subsidized highways for transport, cheap gas, and taxpayer-supported waste pickup and recycling. All while using such beautiful words! Remember James Quincey:
“We believe every package – regardless of where it comes from – has value and life beyond its initial use. If something can be recycled, it should be recycled. So we want to help people everywhere understand how to do their part.”
Except now, Coke has “evolved” its environmental goals. They now aim to use 35% to 40% recycled material and “help ensure the collection of 70% to 75% of bottles and cans, but hey, it’s not really their problem; “The collection and recycling of beverage packaging remains challenging, as every state and country has unique systems, infrastructure, regulatory environments and sets of consumer behaviors.” As Bea Perez concludes so beautifully:
“We know we will have more chapters in our journey and that we can’t do it alone,” Perez said. “Continued collaboration, targeted investments and well-designed policies are crucial to help create shared value for all.”
Coke has been saying one thing and doing another since at least the seventies. Perhaps now they should be lauded for being honest about it. Or maybe not; as water charity Oceana’s Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, Matt Littlejohn, noted in a press release:
“Coca-Cola’s decision to double down on single-use plastic – by killing its goals to reduce virgin plastic and to increase reusable packaging – is short-sighted, irresponsible, and worthy of widespread condemnation by its customers, its employees, its investors, and governments worried about the impact of plastics on our oceans and health.”
He’s got a way with words, too.
UPDATE: This happened last night after I finished this post. Could there be other factors involved?
More on Coke and plastic:
While reading your post today I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes originated by Wendell Berry, but quoted in Tom Philpott's book, "Perilous Bounty". Berry said, "Agricultural experts are highly skilled at taking a solution and dividing it neatly into two problems." He was speaking of the economy of scale and the comparative advantage of growing animals in one place and their feed in another, making it impossible to use the manure as fertilizer to grow the animals food. In the case of Coca Cola I would adapt the statement to read, "Corporations are highly skilled at taking a known solution and shattering it to make multiple problems, then making someone else responsible for cleaning up the mess." What a wonderful world. All this ignores the fact that most of the products Coca Cola makes are both addictive and bad for you.
Coca-Cola’s hypocrisy knows no bounds. In March of 2022, citing “the tragic events in the Ukraine,” the company suspended its business in Russia yet Israel’s wholesale slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza during the past 15 months has not dampened their decades-long support of this apartheid state one iota. Despite being blacklisted by the UN (after repeated warnings), being the target of boycott campaigns involving countries (like Turkey) and organizations (like the Arab League and Friends of Al-Aqsa) going as far back as 1966, the company has refused to suspend operations in the Occupied Territories, has donated to extremist Zionist groups (such as Im Tirtzu), and has repeatedly lied about its abysmal record of putting profits over people. [Even those who don’t support the human rights of Palestinians should be willing to decry Israel’s prolonged assault on Gaza’s ecosystem and the environmental catastrophe that has been unleashed there (see https://www.972mag.com/gaza-war-environmental-catastrophe/).]