Coca-Cola will continue to use single-use plastic, company says consumers want it

Coca-Cola is one of the world’s biggest producers of plastic waste, producing over about three million tones of plastic packaging every year. The company has pledged that it will recycle as many bottles and cans as it sells by 2030, but when at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Coca-Cola shifted responsibility for the heaps of plastic waste it creates on to consumers.

According to a report by the BBC, senior vice president Beatriz Perez emphasised that Coca-Cola has no plans to ditch its plastic, single-use packaging. She said, “Business won’t be in business if we don’t accommodate consumers. So as we change our bottling infrastructure, move into recycling and innovate, we also have to show the consumer what the opportunities are. They will change with us.”

Coca-Cola’s nearly three million tons of yearly plastic waste translates to roughly 2,00,000 bottles per minute. However, the company has committed to using a minimum of 50-percent recycled material in its packaging by 2030 and is participating with NGOs around the world to improve its overall collection methods.

Ms Perez said the firm could not ditch plastic outright or only use aluminium and glass packaging as that would increase Coca-Cola’s carbon footprint. She also failed to commit to stepping down if Coca-Cola was unable to reach its 2030 goal. In an audit, Break Free from Plastic ranked Coca-Cola as the world’s top plastic-polluting corporation in 2019.

However, the best way to reduce Coca-Cola’s plastic waste is by reducing the number of bottles produced, which is not an option the company wants to hear. As extracting and refining virgin aluminium could be more harmful than plastic, and less than 10-percent of the total amount of plastics thrown away are reused. There’s a much bigger chance of those bottles ending up on landfills and oceans.