According to Coca-Cola's Bea Perez, who, be warned, always wears black and red, consumers still want plastic bottles because they reseal and are lightweight. She didn't make any mention of the heavy weight average 325 pieces of microplastic in every bottle or the connection between sodas and a myriad of diseases or plastic pollution filling our oceans, killing 100,000 marine mammals every year and then there's the unknown impact on our bodies from consuming 20,000 pieces of the stuff a year. Or that pretty much nothing sold by Coca-Cola packed in plastic is actually necessary for life on earth. Oh actually, pretty much everything it makes seems to have links to taking some kind of life from earth. Coca-Cola has been testing it's plastic PR straps of late as they have pledged to use at least 50% recycled material in packaging by 2030. WHILE THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS, IT IS WORTH NOTING THAT COKE IS BY FAR THE BIGGEST FMCG USER OF PLASTIC ON EARTH AND CERTAINLY AMONGST THE BIGGEST IN ANY CATEGORY, USING 3 MILLION TONNES A YEAR.In all fairness, the figure was self reported along with 31 other companies and part of a report in Ellen Macarthur Foundation's Plastics Economy. To give you some perspective the plastic usage rate quantums - Coke: 3.0m tonnes | Nestle: 1.7m tonnes | Colgate: 287,008 tonnes | Unilever: 610,000 tonnes.When you consider the sheer volume of plastic, it's hard to understand how Coke and others hasn't been taking more responsibility already.Coke is literally pumping out 200,000 plastic bottles a minute. Ellen Macarthur Foundation reports that
MORE THAN 40 YEARS AFTER THE INTRODUCTION OF THE FIRST UNIVERSAL RECYCLING SYMBOL — ONLY 14% OF PLASTIC PACKAGING IS COLLECTED FOR RECYCLING, EVEN THOUGH ALMOST ALL PLASTICS USED FOR PACKAGING ARE MECHANICALLY RECYCLABLE WITH LITTLE OR NO QUALITY IMPAIRMENT.Like other FMCG companies, Coke are now partnering with NGOs around the world to help improve collection after use. Countries like UK meantime are introducing laws to make companies more accountable for their own waste. Break Free From Plastic conducted a global audit a couple of years ago across 848 cleanup events in 51 countries and six continents. Using 72,541 volunteers, who combed through beaches, city streets, waterways and their neighborhoods picking up pieces of plastic, they literally counted it as they went. Of the plastic collected, the No. 1 brand was from Coca-Cola, with 11,732 items collected, second was Nestle with 4,846 items in 31 countries and the third PepsiCo with 3,362 items in 28 countries. Coke's body count compared to Nestle is consistent with the amount of plastic they use. PepsiCo didn't report on their plastic use, but you can pretty much work it out.In the end, if you want to do something about it, being a climate citizen is easy. Simply don't buy anything made by any of these big polluters. It should be pretty straight forward as your health professional would probably concur anyway.