Coca-Cola, Criticized for Plastic Bottles, Sets Recycling Goals--Update
January 19 2018 - 11:58AM
Dow Jones News
By Cara Lombardo
Coca-Cola Co., long criticized by environmental advocates for
producing billions of plastic bottles that end up in landfills and
oceans, said Friday it wants to collect and recycle the equivalent
of all the packaging it puts out into the world by 2030.
The goal is part of a sustainability initiative announced by the
soda giant called "World Without Waste." Coca-Cola said its efforts
will include investing in more efficient packaging, local recycling
programs and consumer education. It declined to say how much it
will spend as part of the effort.
"Future growth comes with further responsibilities," Chief
Executive James Quincey said on a media call. "As a company, we
must grow with conscience."
Greenpeace, an environmental advocacy group that has identified
Coca-Cola, PepsiCo Inc., and Nestlé SA as some of the worst
polluters, promptly criticized Coke's plan.
"The plan failed to include any reduction of the company's
rapidly increasing use of single-use plastic bottles globally,
which now stands at well over 110 billion annually," the
organization said in a statement issued Friday.
Mr. Quincey disagreed.
"If we recollect all the bottles, there is no such thing as a
single use bottle," he said. "Every bottle comes back and every
bottle has another life."
Coca-Cola, rather than taking on the difficult task of
recollecting all of its own bottles, aims to collect an equivalent
amount of bottles as it produces. Mr. Quincey said the largest
challenges will be in developing countries and the one-quarter of
countries that don't have any form of formal waste collection.
"That's clearly going to be a lot of groundwork with a lot of
other organizations and the governments to start building that
infrastructure, " he said.
The announcement comes a few days after McDonald's Corp. said it
wants all McDonald's restaurants to recycle food-service packaging
by 2025. It also wants 100% of its packaging to come from renewable
or recycled materials or be certified by certain environmental
groups.
PepsiCo and Nestlé didn't immediately respond to requests for
comment. PepsiCo has said it wants 100% of its packaging to be
recyclable or recoverable by 2025, while Nestlé has said it aims to
reduce its packaging material by 140,000 tons between 2015 and
2020.
Coca-Cola also said Friday it wants to make bottles with an
average of 50% recycled material by 2030. Coca-Cola uses a variety
of materials, including glass bottles, aluminum cans and paper
cups, but said plastic, which has come under the most scrutiny, is
its biggest area of focus.
Write to Cara Lombardo at cara.lombardo@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 19, 2018 11:43 ET (16:43 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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