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/).]
The appalment in Gaza should be the unprovoked and heinous terrorist attack by Hamas that killed over 1600 Israelis on October 7th, 2023—as well as a Palestinian population that overwhelming supports Hamas in the total elimination of the Jewish state. If Palestinian civilians are upset they're being targeted by the IDF, then I would tell them these two things:
1. Stop allowing Hamas to use you as a human shield, thereby putting your life and your family's life in danger; and
2. Stop supporting a terrorist regime that steals your humanitarian aid so it can be resold for weapons and uses you as cannon fodder against a much better armed opponent
Israel is not ever going away like it did over 2000 years ago, period. The sooner the average Palestinian understands that, the sooner they can move forward to living together in peace the way Jordan and Saudi Arabia and others in the Middle East have done. But if they continue to act with an eye towards the elimination of the Zionist state, they're going to continue to needlessly suffer. It's really as simple as that.
"then bought up and closed all the independent bottlers who used to sell us our Coke in returnable bottles"
I'm not that old (born in 1969) and I clearly remember the glass returnable bottles in my childhood. I think I was in high school when 2 liter plastic bottle appeared in the stores. It's always pissed me off that we already had a good system (glass returnables) and then abandoned it. Now to find out they got rid of it on purpose! Bastards.
I appreciate your revelatory post. By now everyone should have seen the pictures of coasts and rivers on the other side of the world clogged with plastic. Any way we can reduce our use of plastic products is beneficial. I am happy to refill glass bottles with water or homemade lemonade when I take a day trip away from home. That needs to be a habit for everyone.
>> "...the other side of the world clogged with plastic."
Glad you brought this up - the worst offenders:
Yangtze River, China
Indus River, Pakistan/India
Yellow River, China
Hai River, China
Ganges River, India/Bangladesh
Pearl River, China
Amur River, Russia/China
Mekong River, Southeast Asia
Niger River, West Africa
Nile River, Northeast Africa
And this is why I just don't get why more environmentalists don't get their panties in a wad over what the REAL polluters are doing. Never hear much about China, India, et al. How about getting THEM to get their enviro-acts together instead of just focusing on Western countries that have been making progress?
My use of a plastic bottle here in Phoenix won't end up finding its way into a river on the Mekong delta or the Pacific gyre. Those nations in SE Asia, China, India, and the Nile River own their waterways pollution problem, not me.
I dunno. All of this reminds me of “DieselGate,” the scandal involving a number of Volkswagen, Porsche and Audi vehicle models and how software in the onboard computers was manipulated so that during smog testing, the affected diesel vehicles appeared to be in compliance. Then, when under real-world driving situations, said vehicles were then out of smog compliance.
The long and short of it was such that certain purchasers of so-called “software-altered” models of diesel-engine-equipped Volkswagen, Porsche and Audi motor vehicles, probably believed that by buying and driving vehicles with diesel engines was better for the environment than vehicles equipped with typical gasoline-powered engines.
While I don’t know all of the specific details, it is most likely the case that Volkswagen, Porsche and Audi vehicles of both types are still being sold — and purchased.
The public has the power to just say “No” to purchasing consumer products that are known to be harmful to health and the environment. We should learn to let our consciences be our guide when we’re made aware of such.
I’m glad there are sites such as yours that bring to the public’s attention, matters such as these and other similar ones. The time and effort you put in to helping make a positive difference is most appreciated!
same. i also have disassociated from toyota permanently because they joined the case against california's new fuel standards several years ago. they did this because they bet big on the joke of hydrogen fuel cells. to my knowledge, they still have not released an ev in the u.s. i regret to say we own a tesla (bought used in 2020 to replace our prius). they're next—unless the shareholders get their shit together and replace the ceo with someone who knows how to run a company.
>>"Elon Musk's net worth is estimated to be $426.8 billion as of January 17, 2025. This figure represents a slight decrease from recent highs, as Musk's wealth fluctuates with the performance of his companies, particularly Tesla. Just a few days earlier, on January 14, 2025, his net worth was reported to be $439 billion"
And your achievements and net worth for comparison? And remember, he built all of these multi-billion $$ companies from scratch.
Elon Musk *does* know how to run a company. He's had an excellent track record and people like you couldn't bend over backwards enough to give him platitudes when you thought he was a left-wing progressive—and then when he was lied to about the number of active users on Twitter (and wasn't allowed to renegotiate the sale price despite the number of active non-bot users being fraudulent) he had a bit of a wake-up call. So, once he began espousing the virtues of free speech and rid Twitter of the far-left bias by X's "fact checkers" suddenly your ilk turned on him like week-old milk that had been sitting out at room temperature. I've laughed quite heartily seeing the about-face by zealots when one of their own break ranks from the liberal hive mind to chart his own path.
And Tesla's stock price decline is directly tied to those same liberals dumping their shares out of spite against Musk for promoting free speech for all instead of the lies pushed by progressives.
I remember collecting returnable glass bottles to take to the little local market so I could get money to go to the movies, that was in the 60's. All that many companies are doing about reducing plastic pollution is passing the responsibility for recycling on to the little guy instead of ponying up and taking responsibility for their part in reducing plastic pollution.
The powerful companies are solely interested in making money and anything they say about their commitment to a healthy planet is only lip service.
Sorry, not falling for this. The last thing I remember about the glass bottles was the waste of water to clean them. Environmentalist need to start taking responsibility for their actions.
Lloyd, these disposable water bottles are the same reason why we have plastic bags instead of paper. It was not the company complaining about all the water being used to clean glass bottles. It was the environmentalist. You know the ones who put spikes in trees.
But it still added to the cost of recycling of those items. It is a simple material reality - glass costs more than plastic in manufacture and handling. When marginal profit margins are measured in single digit percentage points, it matters.
>>"Tim Brett … denies that the packaging is problematic; it’s the customer that’s the problem"
Absolutely, 100%. Once the product leaves the manufacturer and is in the hands of the consumer, the consumer bears the sole responsibility for ownership of the product, its packaging, and any recycling.
I could compare Coke to education (my current career) and ask whether or not I, as the teacher, bear full responsibility for student academic achievement and success in university, community college, or the workforce. If a student fails to graduate, or is unable to get a preferred job after graduation or is mired in massive student loan debt, is that **MY** responsibility?
Of course it isn't. What a puerile, nescient belief system if you think otherwise.
I cannot control a student's actions or inactions; I cannot force them to turn in assignments on time, or pass an exam. I cannot compel them to be hired by a preferred employer, let alone control their overall employability. IT IS SOLELY THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STUDENT TO MAKE THE MOST OF HIS OR HER TIME IN THE CLASSROOM TO THEN ACHIEVE THE SUCCESS THEY DESIRE FOR THEMSELVES. If a straight-A student becomes sullen and maligned and fails to become a successful adult, why would that be a reflection of the quality of teaching they received if a 'C'-average student from the same class also began his own company and makes $400K+/yr as its president and CEO?
I have never understood the mentality that we as consumers are powerless against corporate interests. We've seen corporations respond to civic pressure to employ DEI and ESG initiatives—as well as divest from LGBTQ+ promotions, war conflict-prone suppliers, and more. Coke could unilaterally decide to ditch plastic and go entirely recyclable glass, but they must recognize that a certain percentage of that investment will immediately go into the waste stream never to be returned or recycled because people are lazy and quite often assholes. A plastic bottle that costs $0.02 to make, compared to a glass bottle that might cost $0.33 each—given the public's propensity to take the path of least resistance—means that from a fiscal viability perspective the cheaper option might be the "better" one. We saw this with California's initiative to classify retail theft under $999 a misdemeanor instead of a felony, which resulted in so much rampant shoplifting that retailers simply closed down their retail locations rather than continue operating as a loss. So, too, would be an open-ended return to returnable bottling without proper legislation and infrastructure supporting such a move. We as consumers must walk the line and not just demand something of a corporation and ignore our own culpability in the situation.
Yes, the consumer chose to buy the Coke in a "sort of" recyclable plastic bottle, but the did not have a choice of bottles, and the system of recycling, if they did do it, is not very functional. The companies the make the plastic for the bottles are actually responsible for a lot of lost plastic before Coke even purchases the raw plastic to make the bottles, and this is an externalized cost to our environment. Coke could reinstitute a returnable bottle program, but they have not done so. They could be compelled, and the solution is rather simple, add a few cents to each bottle, glass or plastic, that is only returned to the consumer if and when the bottle is returned. This is known to work, but because it requires infrastructure, it may require a mandate. So would you welcome a government mandated reusable bottle return system within your more libertarian approach to economics? What is your opinion about externalized costs to human and environmental systems?
>>"Yes, the consumer chose to buy the Coke in a "sort of" recyclable plastic bottle, but the [sic] did not have a choice of bottles"
That's not the fault of Coca-Cola. You want glass bottles, just don't buy the product. "Lack of choice in the bottle design" should instead be met with "I won't buy your product if it isn't in glass" by the consumer.
You don't do that, you're the problem—not Coke.
>>"This is known to work, but because it requires infrastructure, it may require a mandate."
For whom, **ONLY** Coca-Cola? Or all soda manufacturers? What about bottled water manufacturers, who in 2023 sold 15.94 billion gallons compared to soda at 11.84 billion gallons? Do they get a free pass?
Do you see the problem with mission creep when it comes to "mandates"?
Massachusetts has such a program - a nickel when I was growing up but just went to a dime per bottle. At a nickel, it only had about a 38% return rate. And that was a government mandate costing the recycle front end (usually grocery stores) to take, pay the consumer, and then ship out the empties.
So, when you say mandate, are you "mandating" the above or forcing consumers to return the bottle? Now, take that next step - what are the emissions in going to a place simply to turn in bottles? What about the time cost for the consumer? The cost to hold N of bottles at your home with the bugs trying to get the last bit of sugar from them? And the cost of shipping them out for actual recycling?
TANSTAAFL. Recycling now is a losing proposition right now - do you think there is enough internalized profit in that stream to restart such a stream?
Or will people just continue with "screw that waste of time - out the car window!"?
The cost of washing and sterilizing those bottles needs to be weighed against the cost of simply crushing and melting them into new bottles. Manufacturers got away from reusable glass bottles because it cost them a lot of $$$ to do just that, rather than a disposable plastic bottle—and more importantly, because the consumer felt that a single-use disposable bottle was more hygienic than a reused glass bottle. God knows how some of them were stored, the way you described above, and as a consumer if I knew I didn't GAF about cleaning my reusable bottles before returning them to the store, I probably wouldn't want to purchase a product when the container it's stored in was abused by someone else like me (or worse!)
On a personal level I agree with you. The choice to buy a plastic bottled beverage is personal, and I personally try to not buy drinking liquid in plastic, and certainly not bottled water or sodas (of any kind). The proviso is that I have high quality drinking water at home, and think sodas are, for the most part, toxic. However, in places where the water is bad, people either have to buy what for them is expensive filtration/purification materials, or boil the water, which also has a cost. They may not have a choice, especially when travelling. Over 90% of the time they do though, and other options are possible. We buy too much in plastic, or in liquid form, like laundry detergent, and those are possible to eliminate. But corporations hawk the plastic alternatives, display them prominently in stores, effectively making the non-plastic alternatives disappear. Sometimes regulation is the only alternative, including banning the bad stuff. Ruanda did (plastic bags and bottles), and their capital city is ranked as the cleanest in Africa. I don't think their government is a model to follow, but banning by popular choice is hard to achieve in the face of corporate profit.
>>"But corporations hawk the plastic alternatives"
They hawk them because the container:product weight ratio is superior to using glass, aluminium, cardboard, or other packaging. Liquid products that are prone to breakage do best in plastic, that's just the way it is—and it's not like you could store liquids in a permeable container anyway.
>>"Sometimes regulation is the only alternative, including banning the bad stuff."
There's no reason to ban plastic, though. It's safe, largely inert, can be recycled or burned for waste-to-energy generation, and above all, it's legal. Problems arise when consumers are jerks and just throw it out the car window or dispose of it improperly—but the same can be said about pet waste, and we would never think about banning dogs or cats, would we?
Your ultimate question is, How do we coerce the consumer to do exactly what we want, how we want, when and where we want? That's not the domain of regulatory overreach, it's the domain of the free market. The consumer chose plastic over glass bottles when soda companies first began marketing them, and it was because of plastic's reduced weight, convenience, and protection from harm in the event of breakage. Arguing about how to put the genie back in the bottle (pardon the pun) isn't realistic, not without some kind of materials advancement that is environmentally inert like glass but with all the inherent benefits of plastic packaging.
OK. Question for you. If plastic, despite its good qualities you name accurately, also causes environmental harm, pre-consumer contact (plastic nurdles getting dumped, accidentally or intentionally, carcinogens from manufacturing, CO2 emissions) or post consumer (river and ocean impacts, etc.), how do you propose to deal with the problem if you reject the idea of government regulation?
I don’t think we actually disagree on much other than the level of compromise on individual freedoms necessary to best ensure a long run sustainable society that either of us would want to live in. And even there I would guess that the gap is not that great. I am not saying it wouldn’t be a tough one to bridge but I do think trying is a higher moral calling than giving each other the finger and breaking out the uzzis. I hope you might agree. I suppose it is possible that you would be happy with a state of complete anarchy. I would not and experience suggests that most of us would prefer some semblance of political order at least. The notion that we can all be free to do whatever we please and still live together is naive. A right by might approach is one option but it tends to be unstable and rather ugly for most people. “Socialism” seems to have taken over “communism” as the new boogeyman in the US and the anger and fear behind that seems to be spreading. Stalin’s approach was in my opinion dystopian and unworkable and a completely classless society is a pipe dream. A much less starkly defined and much more mobile one should not be. Complete anarchy is also dystopian and unworkable, in my opinion. As is pure capitalism. I contemplated creating a T-shirt that had the following printed on it “ALL extremists MUST be shot” because I think it illustrates well the fatal flaw inherent in most extreme positions. I hesitated because I thought some clever reader might agree with the statement and then assume anyone wearing it believed that too and feel obliged to shoot them down for expressing such an extreme position before shooting themselves. The western world at least, and others, found a compromise that worked Ok’ish for them while the free bounty of the world seemed endless. We now know with increasing certainty that it is actually quite constrained. Carrying on here in the longer run means fewer of us or less stuff in sum for those here or a combination of the two. Getting there in an ugly way seems to me much more likely when extremists run the show. If I start, as I do, from the idea that society is better than an everyone for themselves world then it follows that I have to accept some curtailment on my individual freedoms. Unless you are on the same page or I can convince you to move there then we are in a free for all. Assuming we agree that some rules are necessary then the challenge becomes to maximize the area of good under that curve over the long run. Acknowledging that no one has a perfect formula for doing that, or even for defining “good” and that good for the one may mean the opposite for other or the group means compromise is required all around. Compromise requires a conversation, speaking and listening. Listening is by far the harder part of that one because everything we hear/read/see comes to us through the filter of our history and that filter tends to be a rather poor translator. Screaming at each other and not acknowledging and reigning in our extremes (the ones on all sides, including inside is, who are sure they know the only right way forward ) makes having a conversation difficult. My filter of your words suggests that you have concluded that the best path forward is to draw a line to divide us and then eliminate those on the other side from the equation so that your team can keep pretending, for a while longer at least, that the world’s bounty is inexhaustible. I don’t think you want to carry out mass exterminations but I do think that that is where that type of thinking leads. Trying to isolate your tribe (expel the other rather than kill them outright or run away) so your tribe can do its own thing in isolation is a strategy that’s time has long passed. It is a temporary solution at best (as the founders of America would see first hand if they could see where it is at today). An alternative translation that I get through my filter is that you have resigned yourself that the shit is going to inevitably hit the fan but you think you can ride out the wave doing as you please until your time is done so to hell with the future. I very much hope I am completely wrong and I think we are together capable of better. I would be interested to know how far off you think my translator of your words is and if I am way off the mark whether you might be able to rephrase your thoughts, knowing a bit through your translator of how I think, to express your ideas in a way that would allow me to understand them more clearly. With a little luck and a lot of work maybe we could get to a point where we could actually carry on a conversation towards a constructive end that we both could live with. I think the world already has access to all the wealth and technology it needs to build a worldwide long term stable society but that we also have a distribution problem that needs significant tweaking and we need to find a better target to direct our energy toward. Based on best estimates of current trends world population growth should stop and begin declining before the end of this century. Our current economic model cannot accommodate that without everyone’s personal consumption continually increasing. We can play with the numbers and technology and maybe push out for a while how long that can carry on before the collapse but collapse it certainly will unless the model is adjusted. We are already fudging to try to rationalize continuing the charade. Trying to fix the problem by increasing the consuming population runs into the same wall (probably sooner). That leads me to: decrease per capita consumption (I don’t see how to do that at the moment without those with the most agreeing to accept less so I need to find a persuasive argument to convince them it is the right thing to do and that they might even feel better if they did) and find persuasive (as opposed to bluntly coercive ways) to curtail population growth sooner and to then slowly decrease total population over time until we reach an equilibrium (with a large redundancy factor preferably) with the planet and other life that allows for long term survival. I don’t know what that number is today. I don’t have any delusion that we can defeat entropy but I think we can maintain local order in this speck of the universe for a very very long time and I think deliberately and collaboratively trying to do so would be a good thing.
You may speak/write your words with the intention to convey a very specific meaning. I try to do the same. Neither of us has the equivalent of a perfect rosetta stone that allows us to make a perfect translation of the other's meaning. To illustrate my point I did a quick search on the difference between sociopath and psychopath. You suggested in your last note that a sociopath is what we used to call a psychopath. Here is an excerpt cut and paste from one of many hits I got from that search:
"Sociopath is not the same thing as a psychopath. Although the terms are often used interchangeably in conversation and popular culture, neither is an official diagnosis.
Instead, "sociopathy" and "psychopathy" describe a set of traits that fall under the larger umbrella of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). This is a personality disorder in which a person shows little or no regard for right and wrong and largely ignores the rights and feelings of others.1
Of the two, psychopathy is generally seen to be more "severe" than sociopathy, suggesting a complete lack of emotion and an inability to love or feel remorse.2
Anderson NE, Kiehl KA. Psychopathy: developmental perspectives and their implications for treatment. Restor Neurol Neurosci. 2014;32(1):103-117. doi:10.3233/RNN-139001
Even so, there is much overlap between the two conditions and much confusion about how they differ."
I don't recall saying that all our behaviour was sociopathic. I was talking about a type of behavior that I believe we all engage in to varying degrees and that I believe we all have a great deal of difficulty controlling because of how we evolved. I was suggesting that collectively this behavior creates a sociopathic subculture that is not maintainable over the long run. Do you disagree?
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/).]
Sorry, Lloyd, but I'm about to sin:
I notice a few important details have been left out.
Nice display of anti-Semitism. I wonder why Lloyd hasn't deleted your post? Odd.
It is not antisemitic to be appalled by the assault on Gaza; half of Israelis do. It's not antisemitic to object to Im Tirtzu; I do, too.
The appalment in Gaza should be the unprovoked and heinous terrorist attack by Hamas that killed over 1600 Israelis on October 7th, 2023—as well as a Palestinian population that overwhelming supports Hamas in the total elimination of the Jewish state. If Palestinian civilians are upset they're being targeted by the IDF, then I would tell them these two things:
1. Stop allowing Hamas to use you as a human shield, thereby putting your life and your family's life in danger; and
2. Stop supporting a terrorist regime that steals your humanitarian aid so it can be resold for weapons and uses you as cannon fodder against a much better armed opponent
Israel is not ever going away like it did over 2000 years ago, period. The sooner the average Palestinian understands that, the sooner they can move forward to living together in peace the way Jordan and Saudi Arabia and others in the Middle East have done. But if they continue to act with an eye towards the elimination of the Zionist state, they're going to continue to needlessly suffer. It's really as simple as that.
I bet you could easily show that Coca Cola has been lying to its customers and the general public since 1870.
Well said! Companies love to say one thing publicly while doing something entirely different behind-the-scenes. Coke is no different
This part seriously pissed me off:
"then bought up and closed all the independent bottlers who used to sell us our Coke in returnable bottles"
I'm not that old (born in 1969) and I clearly remember the glass returnable bottles in my childhood. I think I was in high school when 2 liter plastic bottle appeared in the stores. It's always pissed me off that we already had a good system (glass returnables) and then abandoned it. Now to find out they got rid of it on purpose! Bastards.
same, born 1972
I appreciate your revelatory post. By now everyone should have seen the pictures of coasts and rivers on the other side of the world clogged with plastic. Any way we can reduce our use of plastic products is beneficial. I am happy to refill glass bottles with water or homemade lemonade when I take a day trip away from home. That needs to be a habit for everyone.
>> "...the other side of the world clogged with plastic."
Glad you brought this up - the worst offenders:
Yangtze River, China
Indus River, Pakistan/India
Yellow River, China
Hai River, China
Ganges River, India/Bangladesh
Pearl River, China
Amur River, Russia/China
Mekong River, Southeast Asia
Niger River, West Africa
Nile River, Northeast Africa
And this is why I just don't get why more environmentalists don't get their panties in a wad over what the REAL polluters are doing. Never hear much about China, India, et al. How about getting THEM to get their enviro-acts together instead of just focusing on Western countries that have been making progress?
My use of a plastic bottle here in Phoenix won't end up finding its way into a river on the Mekong delta or the Pacific gyre. Those nations in SE Asia, China, India, and the Nile River own their waterways pollution problem, not me.
"We can’t do it alone"? The only thing Coca-Cola CANNOT do alone is make profits.
I dunno. All of this reminds me of “DieselGate,” the scandal involving a number of Volkswagen, Porsche and Audi vehicle models and how software in the onboard computers was manipulated so that during smog testing, the affected diesel vehicles appeared to be in compliance. Then, when under real-world driving situations, said vehicles were then out of smog compliance.
The long and short of it was such that certain purchasers of so-called “software-altered” models of diesel-engine-equipped Volkswagen, Porsche and Audi motor vehicles, probably believed that by buying and driving vehicles with diesel engines was better for the environment than vehicles equipped with typical gasoline-powered engines.
While I don’t know all of the specific details, it is most likely the case that Volkswagen, Porsche and Audi vehicles of both types are still being sold — and purchased.
The public has the power to just say “No” to purchasing consumer products that are known to be harmful to health and the environment. We should learn to let our consciences be our guide when we’re made aware of such.
I’m glad there are sites such as yours that bring to the public’s attention, matters such as these and other similar ones. The time and effort you put in to helping make a positive difference is most appreciated!
I won't buy a VW for the reason they lied. What despicable humans.
same. i also have disassociated from toyota permanently because they joined the case against california's new fuel standards several years ago. they did this because they bet big on the joke of hydrogen fuel cells. to my knowledge, they still have not released an ev in the u.s. i regret to say we own a tesla (bought used in 2020 to replace our prius). they're next—unless the shareholders get their shit together and replace the ceo with someone who knows how to run a company.
So says P.J about the guy that is now worth north of $430 BILLION...SpaceX, Neurolink, Boring Machine, Grok, Tesla (and a few others).
Perplexity.ai:
>>"Elon Musk's net worth is estimated to be $426.8 billion as of January 17, 2025. This figure represents a slight decrease from recent highs, as Musk's wealth fluctuates with the performance of his companies, particularly Tesla. Just a few days earlier, on January 14, 2025, his net worth was reported to be $439 billion"
And your achievements and net worth for comparison? And remember, he built all of these multi-billion $$ companies from scratch.
And, and of course, X!
Did you just see that CA just decided to withdraw their EV waiver for trucks?
https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2025/01/15/newsom-capitulates-withdraws-bid-to-regulate-electric-vehicles-truck-sales-n2184400
Elon Musk *does* know how to run a company. He's had an excellent track record and people like you couldn't bend over backwards enough to give him platitudes when you thought he was a left-wing progressive—and then when he was lied to about the number of active users on Twitter (and wasn't allowed to renegotiate the sale price despite the number of active non-bot users being fraudulent) he had a bit of a wake-up call. So, once he began espousing the virtues of free speech and rid Twitter of the far-left bias by X's "fact checkers" suddenly your ilk turned on him like week-old milk that had been sitting out at room temperature. I've laughed quite heartily seeing the about-face by zealots when one of their own break ranks from the liberal hive mind to chart his own path.
And Tesla's stock price decline is directly tied to those same liberals dumping their shares out of spite against Musk for promoting free speech for all instead of the lies pushed by progressives.
I remember collecting returnable glass bottles to take to the little local market so I could get money to go to the movies, that was in the 60's. All that many companies are doing about reducing plastic pollution is passing the responsibility for recycling on to the little guy instead of ponying up and taking responsibility for their part in reducing plastic pollution.
The powerful companies are solely interested in making money and anything they say about their commitment to a healthy planet is only lip service.
Are you saying that Coca Cola and the environmentalist were in it together? Interesting.
Sorry, not falling for this. The last thing I remember about the glass bottles was the waste of water to clean them. Environmentalist need to start taking responsibility for their actions.
It takes three liters of water to make the PET for a single disposable bottle. That is more than it takes to wash a glass one.
Lloyd, these disposable water bottles are the same reason why we have plastic bags instead of paper. It was not the company complaining about all the water being used to clean glass bottles. It was the environmentalist. You know the ones who put spikes in trees.
But the handling and shipping cost is far more due to the higher weight. And breakage replacement (couldn't find a percentage, though).
Yes, that is why they were all local businesses.
But it still added to the cost of recycling of those items. It is a simple material reality - glass costs more than plastic in manufacture and handling. When marginal profit margins are measured in single digit percentage points, it matters.
Lost me at the quote from the Head of Communications AND Sustainability. Prob just hasn’t taken off their card yet.
>>"Tim Brett … denies that the packaging is problematic; it’s the customer that’s the problem"
Absolutely, 100%. Once the product leaves the manufacturer and is in the hands of the consumer, the consumer bears the sole responsibility for ownership of the product, its packaging, and any recycling.
I could compare Coke to education (my current career) and ask whether or not I, as the teacher, bear full responsibility for student academic achievement and success in university, community college, or the workforce. If a student fails to graduate, or is unable to get a preferred job after graduation or is mired in massive student loan debt, is that **MY** responsibility?
Of course it isn't. What a puerile, nescient belief system if you think otherwise.
I cannot control a student's actions or inactions; I cannot force them to turn in assignments on time, or pass an exam. I cannot compel them to be hired by a preferred employer, let alone control their overall employability. IT IS SOLELY THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STUDENT TO MAKE THE MOST OF HIS OR HER TIME IN THE CLASSROOM TO THEN ACHIEVE THE SUCCESS THEY DESIRE FOR THEMSELVES. If a straight-A student becomes sullen and maligned and fails to become a successful adult, why would that be a reflection of the quality of teaching they received if a 'C'-average student from the same class also began his own company and makes $400K+/yr as its president and CEO?
I have never understood the mentality that we as consumers are powerless against corporate interests. We've seen corporations respond to civic pressure to employ DEI and ESG initiatives—as well as divest from LGBTQ+ promotions, war conflict-prone suppliers, and more. Coke could unilaterally decide to ditch plastic and go entirely recyclable glass, but they must recognize that a certain percentage of that investment will immediately go into the waste stream never to be returned or recycled because people are lazy and quite often assholes. A plastic bottle that costs $0.02 to make, compared to a glass bottle that might cost $0.33 each—given the public's propensity to take the path of least resistance—means that from a fiscal viability perspective the cheaper option might be the "better" one. We saw this with California's initiative to classify retail theft under $999 a misdemeanor instead of a felony, which resulted in so much rampant shoplifting that retailers simply closed down their retail locations rather than continue operating as a loss. So, too, would be an open-ended return to returnable bottling without proper legislation and infrastructure supporting such a move. We as consumers must walk the line and not just demand something of a corporation and ignore our own culpability in the situation.
Yes, the consumer chose to buy the Coke in a "sort of" recyclable plastic bottle, but the did not have a choice of bottles, and the system of recycling, if they did do it, is not very functional. The companies the make the plastic for the bottles are actually responsible for a lot of lost plastic before Coke even purchases the raw plastic to make the bottles, and this is an externalized cost to our environment. Coke could reinstitute a returnable bottle program, but they have not done so. They could be compelled, and the solution is rather simple, add a few cents to each bottle, glass or plastic, that is only returned to the consumer if and when the bottle is returned. This is known to work, but because it requires infrastructure, it may require a mandate. So would you welcome a government mandated reusable bottle return system within your more libertarian approach to economics? What is your opinion about externalized costs to human and environmental systems?
>>"Yes, the consumer chose to buy the Coke in a "sort of" recyclable plastic bottle, but the [sic] did not have a choice of bottles"
That's not the fault of Coca-Cola. You want glass bottles, just don't buy the product. "Lack of choice in the bottle design" should instead be met with "I won't buy your product if it isn't in glass" by the consumer.
You don't do that, you're the problem—not Coke.
>>"This is known to work, but because it requires infrastructure, it may require a mandate."
For whom, **ONLY** Coca-Cola? Or all soda manufacturers? What about bottled water manufacturers, who in 2023 sold 15.94 billion gallons compared to soda at 11.84 billion gallons? Do they get a free pass?
Do you see the problem with mission creep when it comes to "mandates"?
Massachusetts has such a program - a nickel when I was growing up but just went to a dime per bottle. At a nickel, it only had about a 38% return rate. And that was a government mandate costing the recycle front end (usually grocery stores) to take, pay the consumer, and then ship out the empties.
So, when you say mandate, are you "mandating" the above or forcing consumers to return the bottle? Now, take that next step - what are the emissions in going to a place simply to turn in bottles? What about the time cost for the consumer? The cost to hold N of bottles at your home with the bugs trying to get the last bit of sugar from them? And the cost of shipping them out for actual recycling?
TANSTAAFL. Recycling now is a losing proposition right now - do you think there is enough internalized profit in that stream to restart such a stream?
Or will people just continue with "screw that waste of time - out the car window!"?
The cost of washing and sterilizing those bottles needs to be weighed against the cost of simply crushing and melting them into new bottles. Manufacturers got away from reusable glass bottles because it cost them a lot of $$$ to do just that, rather than a disposable plastic bottle—and more importantly, because the consumer felt that a single-use disposable bottle was more hygienic than a reused glass bottle. God knows how some of them were stored, the way you described above, and as a consumer if I knew I didn't GAF about cleaning my reusable bottles before returning them to the store, I probably wouldn't want to purchase a product when the container it's stored in was abused by someone else like me (or worse!)
On a personal level I agree with you. The choice to buy a plastic bottled beverage is personal, and I personally try to not buy drinking liquid in plastic, and certainly not bottled water or sodas (of any kind). The proviso is that I have high quality drinking water at home, and think sodas are, for the most part, toxic. However, in places where the water is bad, people either have to buy what for them is expensive filtration/purification materials, or boil the water, which also has a cost. They may not have a choice, especially when travelling. Over 90% of the time they do though, and other options are possible. We buy too much in plastic, or in liquid form, like laundry detergent, and those are possible to eliminate. But corporations hawk the plastic alternatives, display them prominently in stores, effectively making the non-plastic alternatives disappear. Sometimes regulation is the only alternative, including banning the bad stuff. Ruanda did (plastic bags and bottles), and their capital city is ranked as the cleanest in Africa. I don't think their government is a model to follow, but banning by popular choice is hard to achieve in the face of corporate profit.
>>"But corporations hawk the plastic alternatives"
They hawk them because the container:product weight ratio is superior to using glass, aluminium, cardboard, or other packaging. Liquid products that are prone to breakage do best in plastic, that's just the way it is—and it's not like you could store liquids in a permeable container anyway.
>>"Sometimes regulation is the only alternative, including banning the bad stuff."
There's no reason to ban plastic, though. It's safe, largely inert, can be recycled or burned for waste-to-energy generation, and above all, it's legal. Problems arise when consumers are jerks and just throw it out the car window or dispose of it improperly—but the same can be said about pet waste, and we would never think about banning dogs or cats, would we?
Your ultimate question is, How do we coerce the consumer to do exactly what we want, how we want, when and where we want? That's not the domain of regulatory overreach, it's the domain of the free market. The consumer chose plastic over glass bottles when soda companies first began marketing them, and it was because of plastic's reduced weight, convenience, and protection from harm in the event of breakage. Arguing about how to put the genie back in the bottle (pardon the pun) isn't realistic, not without some kind of materials advancement that is environmentally inert like glass but with all the inherent benefits of plastic packaging.
OK. Question for you. If plastic, despite its good qualities you name accurately, also causes environmental harm, pre-consumer contact (plastic nurdles getting dumped, accidentally or intentionally, carcinogens from manufacturing, CO2 emissions) or post consumer (river and ocean impacts, etc.), how do you propose to deal with the problem if you reject the idea of government regulation?
Grrrrr... AND the contents are terrible for you, too! What's not to hate?
Super article, Lloyd.
I don’t think we actually disagree on much other than the level of compromise on individual freedoms necessary to best ensure a long run sustainable society that either of us would want to live in. And even there I would guess that the gap is not that great. I am not saying it wouldn’t be a tough one to bridge but I do think trying is a higher moral calling than giving each other the finger and breaking out the uzzis. I hope you might agree. I suppose it is possible that you would be happy with a state of complete anarchy. I would not and experience suggests that most of us would prefer some semblance of political order at least. The notion that we can all be free to do whatever we please and still live together is naive. A right by might approach is one option but it tends to be unstable and rather ugly for most people. “Socialism” seems to have taken over “communism” as the new boogeyman in the US and the anger and fear behind that seems to be spreading. Stalin’s approach was in my opinion dystopian and unworkable and a completely classless society is a pipe dream. A much less starkly defined and much more mobile one should not be. Complete anarchy is also dystopian and unworkable, in my opinion. As is pure capitalism. I contemplated creating a T-shirt that had the following printed on it “ALL extremists MUST be shot” because I think it illustrates well the fatal flaw inherent in most extreme positions. I hesitated because I thought some clever reader might agree with the statement and then assume anyone wearing it believed that too and feel obliged to shoot them down for expressing such an extreme position before shooting themselves. The western world at least, and others, found a compromise that worked Ok’ish for them while the free bounty of the world seemed endless. We now know with increasing certainty that it is actually quite constrained. Carrying on here in the longer run means fewer of us or less stuff in sum for those here or a combination of the two. Getting there in an ugly way seems to me much more likely when extremists run the show. If I start, as I do, from the idea that society is better than an everyone for themselves world then it follows that I have to accept some curtailment on my individual freedoms. Unless you are on the same page or I can convince you to move there then we are in a free for all. Assuming we agree that some rules are necessary then the challenge becomes to maximize the area of good under that curve over the long run. Acknowledging that no one has a perfect formula for doing that, or even for defining “good” and that good for the one may mean the opposite for other or the group means compromise is required all around. Compromise requires a conversation, speaking and listening. Listening is by far the harder part of that one because everything we hear/read/see comes to us through the filter of our history and that filter tends to be a rather poor translator. Screaming at each other and not acknowledging and reigning in our extremes (the ones on all sides, including inside is, who are sure they know the only right way forward ) makes having a conversation difficult. My filter of your words suggests that you have concluded that the best path forward is to draw a line to divide us and then eliminate those on the other side from the equation so that your team can keep pretending, for a while longer at least, that the world’s bounty is inexhaustible. I don’t think you want to carry out mass exterminations but I do think that that is where that type of thinking leads. Trying to isolate your tribe (expel the other rather than kill them outright or run away) so your tribe can do its own thing in isolation is a strategy that’s time has long passed. It is a temporary solution at best (as the founders of America would see first hand if they could see where it is at today). An alternative translation that I get through my filter is that you have resigned yourself that the shit is going to inevitably hit the fan but you think you can ride out the wave doing as you please until your time is done so to hell with the future. I very much hope I am completely wrong and I think we are together capable of better. I would be interested to know how far off you think my translator of your words is and if I am way off the mark whether you might be able to rephrase your thoughts, knowing a bit through your translator of how I think, to express your ideas in a way that would allow me to understand them more clearly. With a little luck and a lot of work maybe we could get to a point where we could actually carry on a conversation towards a constructive end that we both could live with. I think the world already has access to all the wealth and technology it needs to build a worldwide long term stable society but that we also have a distribution problem that needs significant tweaking and we need to find a better target to direct our energy toward. Based on best estimates of current trends world population growth should stop and begin declining before the end of this century. Our current economic model cannot accommodate that without everyone’s personal consumption continually increasing. We can play with the numbers and technology and maybe push out for a while how long that can carry on before the collapse but collapse it certainly will unless the model is adjusted. We are already fudging to try to rationalize continuing the charade. Trying to fix the problem by increasing the consuming population runs into the same wall (probably sooner). That leads me to: decrease per capita consumption (I don’t see how to do that at the moment without those with the most agreeing to accept less so I need to find a persuasive argument to convince them it is the right thing to do and that they might even feel better if they did) and find persuasive (as opposed to bluntly coercive ways) to curtail population growth sooner and to then slowly decrease total population over time until we reach an equilibrium (with a large redundancy factor preferably) with the planet and other life that allows for long term survival. I don’t know what that number is today. I don’t have any delusion that we can defeat entropy but I think we can maintain local order in this speck of the universe for a very very long time and I think deliberately and collaboratively trying to do so would be a good thing.
You may speak/write your words with the intention to convey a very specific meaning. I try to do the same. Neither of us has the equivalent of a perfect rosetta stone that allows us to make a perfect translation of the other's meaning. To illustrate my point I did a quick search on the difference between sociopath and psychopath. You suggested in your last note that a sociopath is what we used to call a psychopath. Here is an excerpt cut and paste from one of many hits I got from that search:
"Sociopath is not the same thing as a psychopath. Although the terms are often used interchangeably in conversation and popular culture, neither is an official diagnosis.
Instead, "sociopathy" and "psychopathy" describe a set of traits that fall under the larger umbrella of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). This is a personality disorder in which a person shows little or no regard for right and wrong and largely ignores the rights and feelings of others.1
Of the two, psychopathy is generally seen to be more "severe" than sociopathy, suggesting a complete lack of emotion and an inability to love or feel remorse.2
Anderson NE, Kiehl KA. Psychopathy: developmental perspectives and their implications for treatment. Restor Neurol Neurosci. 2014;32(1):103-117. doi:10.3233/RNN-139001
Even so, there is much overlap between the two conditions and much confusion about how they differ."
I don't recall saying that all our behaviour was sociopathic. I was talking about a type of behavior that I believe we all engage in to varying degrees and that I believe we all have a great deal of difficulty controlling because of how we evolved. I was suggesting that collectively this behavior creates a sociopathic subculture that is not maintainable over the long run. Do you disagree?
And Coke's product (as well as all the other soda pops) rots your teeth and contributes to folks getting diabetes.