Coca-Cola is reducing its plastic recycling targets from previous commitments, which advocacy groups say is an abandonment of its reuse goals. The beverage giant’s announcement comes just as talks for a global plastic treaty stalled this month.
In a statement published Dec. 2 on its website, Coca-Cola said it has updated its voluntary environment goals and is now aiming for 35-40% recycled material in primary packaging by 2035. In a 2022 pledge, the company had said it would aim to use 50% recycled material in its packaging by 2030.
The company also says it now aims to collect 70-75% of the “equivalent number of bottles and cans introduced into the market annually.” Previously, it said it would collect and recycle a bottle or can “for every one we sell by 2030.”
“Coke’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,” Von Hernandez, global coordinator of advocacy group Break Free From Plastic (BFFP), said in a statement. “This only reinforces the company’s reputation as the World’s Top Plastic polluter.”
BFFP, which tagged Coca-Cola as a top plastics polluter in its 2023 brand audit report, noted that Coca-Cola removed the 2022 pledge from its website just before the start of the plastics treaty negotiation. “The company’s new announcement includes no mention of its reusable commitment as if it never existed,” BFFP said.
Coca-Cola also makes no mention of its prior goal of reducing the “use of virgin plastic derived from non-renewable sources by a cumulative 3 million metric tons from 2020 to 2025.” The company’s new announcement simply says “the use of recycled content in primary packaging can help reduce the company’s emissions. This effort, combined with innovations such as lightweighting, can avoid the additional use of virgin plastic.”
In another previous goal, the company had stated that by 2030 at least 25% of the volume of its sold beverages will be in refillable or returnable glass or plastic bottles or in fountain dispensers with reusable packaging. The new goal says the company “intends to invest to expand the use of refillable packaging in markets where infrastructure is in place to support this important part of the company’s portfolio.”
Matt Littlejohn, senior vice president for strategic initiatives at marine advocacy NGO Oceana, said Coca-Cola’s revised goals mean that likely “many more billions of single-use plastic bottles and cups will continue to flood into our waterways and seas.”
The group estimates that if Coca-Cola had stuck with its 25% reusable packaging goal for 2030, “the company could avoid producing the equivalent of over 100 billion 500ml single-use plastic bottles.”
“Coca-Cola’s investors and governments around the world should take notice and take steps to hold the company accountable,” Littlejohn said.
Banner image of a water vole beside a plastic bottle in Derbyshire, U.K., courtesy of Jack Perks/Greenpeace.
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