Coca-Cola investors and environmentalists have launched a shareholder campaign calling on the soft drink manufacturer – which has been named the world’s top plastic polluter for the fourth year running – to reduce its single-use plastic consumption by 25%.
Initiated by activist investment platform, Tulipshare and environmental not-for-profit, City to Sea, the campaign comes as the company sells over 100 billion plastic bottles every year, according to conservation organisation Plastic Soup Foundation.
The collaborators have also said that despite Coca-Cola’s initiatives such as its World Without Waste campaign, which will see the company helping to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one it sells by 2030, it has retained its title for the fourth year as the world’s top plastic polluter.
The new target would sit alongside the company’s current goal for 25% of its beverages globally to be sold in refillable or returnable glass or plastic bottles by 2030.
“In the five seconds it takes you to read this sentence, Coca-Cola will have pumped out an additional 16,000 single-use plastic bottles,” City to Sea CEO and founder, Natalie Fee said.
“Annually this amounts to over 100 billion throw-away bottles comprising one-fifth of the entire world’s PET plastic use. This is evidently totally unsustainable. Coca-Cola has already committed to impressive reuse and refill targets. Now it needs to have an equally ambitious target to reduce its single-use plastic.”
Tulipshare chief executive and founder, Antoine Argouges added: “Unless we can get our plastic pollution problem under control, we cannot hope to create a better future for our planet.
“Considering Coca-Cola’s record with greenwashing and their recent sponsorship of COP27, it’s more important than ever that we as shareholders push them to adopt more effective targets, without which we cannot realistically fight against climate change.”
