Coca-Cola criticized for falling behind on reusable packaging goal

USA – The Coca-Cola Company has been criticized by environmental group Oceana for falling behind on its reusable packaging goal, pledging 25% reusable packaging globally by 2030.

Despite Coca-Cola’s pledge to improve its use of renewable packaging, environmental groups have started calling into question the beverage giant’s efforts.

In April, Greenpeace criticized Coca-Cola’s commitment to curtailing plastic waste as it noted the beverage giant is using more single-use plastic but the number of refillable bottles it has in circulation has stayed the same.

For its part, Oceana estimated, based on Coca-Cola’s total reported volume of sales, that the reported two percentage point decline to 14% could mean it produced the equivalent of an additional 5.8 billion (16.9 US fl. oz) single-use plastic bottles and cups during the last two years.

Oceana noted Coca-Cola said part of the decline was attributable to changes in reporting metrics.

Matt Littlejohn, Oceana’s senior vice president, in a statement, said: “This decline, the failure of The Coca-Cola Company to proactively explain why this happened, and the concurrent decline in reusable share by some of the company’s largest bottling partners significantly undermine the viability of the company’s recent reusable packaging commitment.”

Oceana said Coca-Cola needs “to step up and provide the support and leadership” to grow sales of reusable containers dramatically worldwide, including aggressively marketing the plastic-reducing benefits and other advantages of reusable packaging to consumers.

Meanwhile, the Atlanta-based company highlighted a few of its efforts, including making 100% of its packaging recyclable globally by 2025 (currently 90%) and using at least 50% recycled materials in its packaging by 2030 (currently 25% across all materials and 15% for PET). 

“We are accountable for our progress, and Oceana has acknowledged in our conversations that the [bottling] system is taking this opportunity seriously,” Coca-Cola said.

In its 2022 sustainability report, Coca-Cola noted that it used 134 billion plastic bottles, up from 117 billion in 2018 — making it one of the biggest users of plastic on the planet.

During that time, Coca-Cola has increased the amount of aluminum and steel bottles and cans from about 60 billion to 73 billion, while refillable plastic bottles have stayed at about 4 billion.

This is not the first time the beverage giant has been criticized. Last year Greenpeace slammed Coca-Cola’s COP27 sponsorship, terming the beverage corporation the world’s biggest plastic polluter.

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