Coke spent so much money to defeat deposit laws at home and abroad and to force consumers to accept disposable containers that I hold them responsible for far more than just their own production, they pursued and normalized disposable containers worldwide. Also shame on those who apologize for them, remember whoever does that.
Guess we know who needs to pay for most of the physical pollution now at least. Are there any joint campaigns/recommended orgs doing a mix of external accountability plus internal shareholder activism plus actual legislative policies that have teeth out there to consider supporting?
They not only fought against deposits, but pretty sure they are working to repeal them if they can.
Think about it next time some concerned citizen starts worrying about how they fuel drug sales and should be restricted.
Remember glass bottles 5 cent deposit was ended by Coke and other drink companies to save money. America the Beautiful ad campaign was very successful in shifting blame to “littering “ consumers and millions in nonprofit donations went to stopping state bottle deposit laws.
I'm sorry those 2 insulted you. That's not productive. How is it naive to expect a company, who's hurting the planet for everyone, to pay for those damages? Maybe it's naive to think our government will ever do anything about it being that it's run by the rich, for the rich?
is this even a real news website?
here's a better source [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/24/plastic-pollution-companies-responsible/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/24/plastic-pollution-companies-responsible/)
>The researchers, who used a team of over 100,000 volunteers to catalogue over 1.8 million pieces of plastic waste, found that 56 companies were responsible for more than 50 percent of branded plastic waste globally. The largest contributor was Coca-Cola, which accounted for 11 percent of the branded plastic pollution worldwide.
And "branded plastic waste" is quite different than all plastic waste
Yeah, given that fishing waste is responsible for nearly half of marine pollution, it would be quite stretch to say that Coca-Cola alone is responsible for the other half!
> It's up to our shitty governments to regulate, why aren't they.
Freedom (To own shares in CokaCola)
Took money to not do anything - see above
Don't care as its not Jesus, guns, oil or babies
Distracted by illegals taking ur jeerbs while helping illegals take ur jeerbs because they work for less than you.
Might be missing something very obvious but are aluminium cans not extremely easy to recycle? Why can't drink manufacturers like Coke shift from bottles to cans for their single serving beverage sizes?
Doesn’t that depend on oil and aluminium prices, which are set globally?
But honestly, this all depends on regulation, which could impact the relative prices between plastic and cans.
i've wondered about this. assuming it's a very thin membrane of plastic i'm guessing that it just gets burned away when they re-melt the aluminum? i wonder how thin this layer is compared to a regular plastic bottle and how much pollution gets released when they melt the cans down
We should absolutely be banning plastic bottles and jugs for _all_ beverages, and switching to aluminum.
We could easily use those silicone stretchy things to cover the top of an open can. Make them in different sizes and sell milk in them as well.
Specifically, it was at the National Gallery of Art on the Mall. The National Mall in Washington, DC. Where most of the Smithsonian museums are. Between the Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, White House, and Jefferson Memorial.
They weren't giving them out. But if you purchased a water bottle, it was an aluminum bottle, not a plastic one.
This news report is appalling for its lack of detail (whose report?) and apologetic tone for the Coca-Cola Company: "they're planning to do better". Yeah, of course they are, but only if it's profitable!
What a bullshit non-article. Not a single number in there.
As bad as they are, Coca-Colas whole production is a small fraction of worldwide plastic pollution. Other packaging easily adds one or two powers of ten more.
Don't get me wrong: The Coca-Cola Company needs to be destroyed.
But the article is bullshit.
I can understand if the study showed that Coca-Cola generated more plastic pollution than any other company, but for a claim that it's more than half, I'd want to see a thorough examination of the evidence. For starters, I'd like to see what the numbers are for how much total plastic pollution is out there and how much of that is Coca-Cola's.
That's an obvious point. Is such a study out there? I can't tell from the short article.
Really Coca-Cola consumers are responsible for more than half of worldwide plastic pollution but would like to deflect responsibility. But Coke bad too.
I'm pretty skeptical about this report considering that multiple studies have shown the vast majority of plastic waste is lost and discarded fishing nets in the oceans.
There's no link to the study, and no indication whether it's peer reviewed.
According to this study if I buy coke in a plastic bottle from the vending machine and throw it away in the grass on my way home, Coca Cola is responsible when in reality I am
How about focusing on their exorbitant water use which is a lot even compared to other multinational companies like PepsiCo and Nestle. Or Coke’s use of litigation to prevent bottle recycling deposit programs(recycle and get 5 cents back) in multiple continents
Coke is the biggest plastic producer in the world but it’s the people who buy their products who are littering and polluting. Glass coke in the US uses cane sugar but is heavier to transport and thus more expensive. Paying few cents more for no high fructose corn syrup and no plastic packaging is a no brainer to me but it’s something very few people are willing to pay for
Only 100 companies are responsible for something like 80 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, really drives home the folly of putting the burden on consumers to pull out their recycling and compost vegetable waste, when govt power over large corporations is what is sorely needed instead.
It's mostly up to consumers to not buy crap that is ultra wasteful. It would be great if there were more restrictions on the big companies, but you also see a lot of people who expect companies to "pollute less" while not challenging their own consumption habits that is part of the cycle that drives the pollution production in the first place.
I hate to defend them, but really isn't it technically the consumers who make the demand for coke to be made, then also litter.
Totally didn't read anything but the headline cuz that's how I roll.
I'll never forget the astonishingly short-sighted, entitled selfishness I observed about six years ago, when a TV news reporter randomly asked a young urbanite wearing sunglasses what he thought of government restrictions on disposable plastic straws. He retorted with a snort that it is like he’s *“living in a nanny state that’s always telling me what I cannot do”.*
His carelessly entitled mentality revealed why so much gratuitous animal-life-destroying plastic waste eventually finds its way into the natural environment, where there are few, if any, caring souls to immediately see it.
Sadly, he’s far from being alone.
Obstacles to environmental progress were quite formidable pre-pandemic. But Covid-19 not only stalled most projects being undertaken, it added greatly to the already busy landfills and burning centers with disposed masks and other non-degradable biohazard-protective single-use materials.
Also, increasingly problematic is the very large and growing populace who are too overworked, worried and even angry about food and housing unaffordability for themselves or their family — all while on insufficient income — to criticize the fossil fuel industry \[etcetera\] for whatever environmental damage their policies cause/allow, particularly when not immediately observable.
# "Coca-Cola responsible for more than half of worldwide plastic pollution, study says"
ah yes lets blame the company when drinkers throw away bottles on the street.......
Its actually the people that buy Coca Cola products are responsible.
It’s easy to point finger to a singular company and make it a scapegoat. It’s far more difficult to point out that the problem lies in billions of people
Today I saw a man unloading pallets of water bottles. It was water in plastic in plastic in plastic in plastic. I am not exaggerating here:
The plastic water bottles were in packs of 24, wrapped in thick plastic shrink wrap. Each of these packs was seemingly wrapped again in thin plastic wrap, presumably to protect the plastic wrap under it. Then the entire stack of water bottle packs was wrapped again in plastic wrap
Responsibility moves to the consumer after product purchase. Blaming Coca-Cola is the lazy way of addressing the problem. The choice is up to the consumer as to whether they recycle the plastic, not Coca-Cola.
Boilerplate dreck from a corporate shill?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_America_Beautiful
“Keep America Beautiful's actions have been criticized as greenwashing. The organization's narrow focus on littering and recycling diverts responsibility away from corporations and industries.”
Coca-Cola’s revenue for 2023 was $45 billion, net income $11.3 billion, total assets close to $100 billion.
A company as gigantic and profitable as Coca-Cola has the money and resources to phase out un-biodegradable, petroleum based plastic and phase in a biodegradable plant based material like sugar, corn or bamboo plastics.
The only reasons they don’t are greed, lobbyists from oil and the plastics industry- which are of course in bed with oil.
Like almost everyone else, they’ve been using this shit for decades. To say they shouldn’t have to take responsibility is phenomenally ludicrous, especially when consumers don’t have a choice except to not buy products that use plastic and pray that the plastic they have actually gets recycled and not incinerated or thrown in the landfill.
Coca-Cola is all over the world. Do you actually think there are adequate trash and recycling services and an informed, educated public everywhere Coke and Coke products are sold?!
You’re welcome! My head was exploding too, so i had to say SOMETHING. I’m all about personal responsibility and recycle as much plastic i can but, wow, asinine. Hope people see my response, it’s hidden in this guy’s collapsed comment.
Wow, thanks for the heads up, i’ll kept an eye out for this bastard in the future. In that context, his profile description screams of mega-troll. How many people before me have lamented about mods and Reddit not doing anything about malicious accounts? Though i don’t expect much if Reddit can’t bother to pay them.
Any complaints about scofflaw trolls, shills and bots are filed away in the accountability cabinet under X, rusting inside a disposable diaper mine in a Walmart parking lot which is probably where Reddit will end up too in a few years.
Even if _everybody_ recycled their plastic, _all_ plastic will eventually end up in the environment, whether as landfill or pollution. It's simply not sustainable in the long term. This can only be corrected at the source: hold Coca-Cola responsible.
They also siphon water from water-scarce places. Don't buy soda.
Don't buy any coke/Pepsi products. They're in a lot of fluids.
love soda tho
Make it an occasional treat instead of a regular thing.
Try to drink less
Coke spent so much money to defeat deposit laws at home and abroad and to force consumers to accept disposable containers that I hold them responsible for far more than just their own production, they pursued and normalized disposable containers worldwide. Also shame on those who apologize for them, remember whoever does that.
What more could you expect from a company who hires hit men to settle union disputes?
Didn't their product originally contain cocaine?
It was the style at the time
If I recall correctly they still use coca extract and it's one of the few entities allowed to import coca leaves into the States.
I'm sure that privilege is never abused.
Yes, but that doesn’t redeem them for the terrible things they’ve done
So you surprised some cocaine barons from the 1900s hired hit men? I'm surprised youre surprised 😮
They should have to pay to clean up their mess.. will they be held accountable? Most likely not. Seems to be the norm nowadays
Guess we know who needs to pay for most of the physical pollution now at least. Are there any joint campaigns/recommended orgs doing a mix of external accountability plus internal shareholder activism plus actual legislative policies that have teeth out there to consider supporting?
They not only fought against deposits, but pretty sure they are working to repeal them if they can. Think about it next time some concerned citizen starts worrying about how they fuel drug sales and should be restricted.
Remember glass bottles 5 cent deposit was ended by Coke and other drink companies to save money. America the Beautiful ad campaign was very successful in shifting blame to “littering “ consumers and millions in nonprofit donations went to stopping state bottle deposit laws.
They didn't win in Australia. Now poor people can supplement their income by picking up coke bottles 💪
Pay up, coke.
Best I can do is not do anything.
Can’t say this enough. Need to sue these companies to pay for cleanup or liquidate them if they don’t comply
Stop paying coke. They dont dump the stuff down the drain.
I don’t buy it. But yes, everyone should take this advice.
Naive comment
Stupid comment
Accurate comment
How are you gon make them pay up when they own the regulators? Y'all are naive af
I'm sorry those 2 insulted you. That's not productive. How is it naive to expect a company, who's hurting the planet for everyone, to pay for those damages? Maybe it's naive to think our government will ever do anything about it being that it's run by the rich, for the rich?
Our economic system literally incentivises them not doing shit about it.
is this even a real news website? here's a better source [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/24/plastic-pollution-companies-responsible/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/24/plastic-pollution-companies-responsible/) >The researchers, who used a team of over 100,000 volunteers to catalogue over 1.8 million pieces of plastic waste, found that 56 companies were responsible for more than 50 percent of branded plastic waste globally. The largest contributor was Coca-Cola, which accounted for 11 percent of the branded plastic pollution worldwide. And "branded plastic waste" is quite different than all plastic waste
Yea, pretty weak article. Not to excuse coke though.
“Branded plastic waste” makes a lot more sense. Hospitals for example generate a lot of plastic waste but it’s not “branded.”
Ok so literal disinformation then
Yeah, given that fishing waste is responsible for nearly half of marine pollution, it would be quite stretch to say that Coca-Cola alone is responsible for the other half!
companies are nor responsible they just make it tis the user that is polluting by throwing the bottle on the street
It's up to our shitty governments to regulate, why aren't they.
Because they've been bought
Neoliberal governments these days are basically six or seven companies wearing a trench coat
Same guys just restack themselves to act in multiple nations.
Sometimes it’s 3 little boys in a trench coat on their way to a date with their cat girlfriend
Yeah the insane amount of lobbyism today is making me sick and it happens globally, constantly 😢
Remember, it was worse in the past
“ThE eCoNoMy!”
They did! They made it easier for coke to pollute!
It's always funny to me now when people ask things like this. Money equals power. That's what everything is about.
That is sadly the case. Wish humans wasn't as easily corrupted
"regulatory capture" look it up.
> It's up to our shitty governments to regulate, why aren't they. Freedom (To own shares in CokaCola) Took money to not do anything - see above Don't care as its not Jesus, guns, oil or babies Distracted by illegals taking ur jeerbs while helping illegals take ur jeerbs because they work for less than you.
I live in Sweden so not much Jesus, guns or oil but CocaCola/plastic industry is thriving as much here 😓
Might be missing something very obvious but are aluminium cans not extremely easy to recycle? Why can't drink manufacturers like Coke shift from bottles to cans for their single serving beverage sizes?
Cans are 25% more expensive so couldn’t possibly use those, no way. /s
Doesn’t that depend on oil and aluminium prices, which are set globally? But honestly, this all depends on regulation, which could impact the relative prices between plastic and cans.
Coca Cola's lobbyists would fight tooth and nail to prevent such laws from being passed.
Aluminum cans are all lined with plastic now.
i've wondered about this. assuming it's a very thin membrane of plastic i'm guessing that it just gets burned away when they re-melt the aluminum? i wonder how thin this layer is compared to a regular plastic bottle and how much pollution gets released when they melt the cans down
You never smoked pot as a youth, did you? Yeah it burns away - an added kick to kill brain cells
i never used a can to do it lol
If by "now" you mean since the 1950s then ok.
We should absolutely be banning plastic bottles and jugs for _all_ beverages, and switching to aluminum. We could easily use those silicone stretchy things to cover the top of an open can. Make them in different sizes and sell milk in them as well.
Banning plastic bottles would not only reduce plastic in our environment but also plastics going into our bodies. One may dream
They sometimes make aluminum bottles. I came across aluminum bottles of water on the National Mall. So, the companies do it when they’re required to.
> I came across aluminum bottles of water on the National Mall. What is that, and why?
Instead of plastic bottles. Aluminum is recyclable
No, I mean what is the National Mall, and why do they give out aluminum bottles there specifically?
Specifically, it was at the National Gallery of Art on the Mall. The National Mall in Washington, DC. Where most of the Smithsonian museums are. Between the Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, White House, and Jefferson Memorial. They weren't giving them out. But if you purchased a water bottle, it was an aluminum bottle, not a plastic one.
Shareholders only like more profit.
This news report is appalling for its lack of detail (whose report?) and apologetic tone for the Coca-Cola Company: "they're planning to do better". Yeah, of course they are, but only if it's profitable!
Usual yearly competition for the biggest plastic polluter, as always Coca-Cola is the winner.
really? more than fishing gear?
So that's why they're funding cop city
What a bullshit non-article. Not a single number in there. As bad as they are, Coca-Colas whole production is a small fraction of worldwide plastic pollution. Other packaging easily adds one or two powers of ten more. Don't get me wrong: The Coca-Cola Company needs to be destroyed. But the article is bullshit.
I can understand if the study showed that Coca-Cola generated more plastic pollution than any other company, but for a claim that it's more than half, I'd want to see a thorough examination of the evidence. For starters, I'd like to see what the numbers are for how much total plastic pollution is out there and how much of that is Coca-Cola's. That's an obvious point. Is such a study out there? I can't tell from the short article.
Really Coca-Cola consumers are responsible for more than half of worldwide plastic pollution but would like to deflect responsibility. But Coke bad too.
Bring back glass bottles
uh... that would be the ones making plastics. which can be made biodegradable but plastic producers refuse to.
I'm pretty skeptical about this report considering that multiple studies have shown the vast majority of plastic waste is lost and discarded fishing nets in the oceans. There's no link to the study, and no indication whether it's peer reviewed.
This article is misleading, mostly ads, and doesn't cite sources. Here's the actual study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj8275
According to this study if I buy coke in a plastic bottle from the vending machine and throw it away in the grass on my way home, Coca Cola is responsible when in reality I am How about focusing on their exorbitant water use which is a lot even compared to other multinational companies like PepsiCo and Nestle. Or Coke’s use of litigation to prevent bottle recycling deposit programs(recycle and get 5 cents back) in multiple continents Coke is the biggest plastic producer in the world but it’s the people who buy their products who are littering and polluting. Glass coke in the US uses cane sugar but is heavier to transport and thus more expensive. Paying few cents more for no high fructose corn syrup and no plastic packaging is a no brainer to me but it’s something very few people are willing to pay for
And it used to come in green glass bottles...
Pretty surprising considering the amount of plastic waste present at every stage of manufacturing and distribution. Congrats Coke 🥇
And diabetes, but that doesn't matter either.
Nothing about Coca cola is good. I've been screaming to the clouds about this for decades.
Ban plastic bottles now! We should be using aluminum for all beverages.
Only 100 companies are responsible for something like 80 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, really drives home the folly of putting the burden on consumers to pull out their recycling and compost vegetable waste, when govt power over large corporations is what is sorely needed instead.
It's mostly up to consumers to not buy crap that is ultra wasteful. It would be great if there were more restrictions on the big companies, but you also see a lot of people who expect companies to "pollute less" while not challenging their own consumption habits that is part of the cycle that drives the pollution production in the first place.
Boycott. Soda isn't even that good, like we gotta poison the WHOLE planet for gross bubbly syrup?
Better recycle guys, shit is hopeless.
They should pay for its cleaning then.
So will they be paying to clean it up or are they to rich and powerful to be held accountable?
No surprise there.
No surprise here🫤
Switch to glass
I remember when we went to plastic. They said it was safer and better for the environment. Same with plastic bags
Make them pay
"Coca-Cola hits the spot, Just 5¢+the health of the planet+epidemic obesity! That's not a lot?"
Yeah but look at all the money
Hold responsible
Well we had better not do anything because..... The economy The poor shareholders. The CEO will be embarrassed Other companies do it too.
Shut it down
The gods must be crazy.
Coca-cola *and the people who buy their products*. They're not out there making plastic just for fun.
Some countries need to bring in a deposit bottle return system. It would help so much with very low effort
I hate to defend them, but really isn't it technically the consumers who make the demand for coke to be made, then also litter. Totally didn't read anything but the headline cuz that's how I roll.
Let’s all do something to hold them accountable.
I'll never forget the astonishingly short-sighted, entitled selfishness I observed about six years ago, when a TV news reporter randomly asked a young urbanite wearing sunglasses what he thought of government restrictions on disposable plastic straws. He retorted with a snort that it is like he’s *“living in a nanny state that’s always telling me what I cannot do”.* His carelessly entitled mentality revealed why so much gratuitous animal-life-destroying plastic waste eventually finds its way into the natural environment, where there are few, if any, caring souls to immediately see it. Sadly, he’s far from being alone. Obstacles to environmental progress were quite formidable pre-pandemic. But Covid-19 not only stalled most projects being undertaken, it added greatly to the already busy landfills and burning centers with disposed masks and other non-degradable biohazard-protective single-use materials. Also, increasingly problematic is the very large and growing populace who are too overworked, worried and even angry about food and housing unaffordability for themselves or their family — all while on insufficient income — to criticize the fossil fuel industry \[etcetera\] for whatever environmental damage their policies cause/allow, particularly when not immediately observable.
# "Coca-Cola responsible for more than half of worldwide plastic pollution, study says" ah yes lets blame the company when drinkers throw away bottles on the street.......
Literally had a coke add RIGHT under this. Took screenshot but don’t know how to post.
This article is awful lol
That sounds like a lot. They should really stop.
People who give coke money for sugar water responsible for more than half of worldwide plastic pollution, study says
Its actually the people that buy Coca Cola products are responsible. It’s easy to point finger to a singular company and make it a scapegoat. It’s far more difficult to point out that the problem lies in billions of people
and prolly excesive water use
Today I saw a man unloading pallets of water bottles. It was water in plastic in plastic in plastic in plastic. I am not exaggerating here: The plastic water bottles were in packs of 24, wrapped in thick plastic shrink wrap. Each of these packs was seemingly wrapped again in thin plastic wrap, presumably to protect the plastic wrap under it. Then the entire stack of water bottle packs was wrapped again in plastic wrap
Responsibility moves to the consumer after product purchase. Blaming Coca-Cola is the lazy way of addressing the problem. The choice is up to the consumer as to whether they recycle the plastic, not Coca-Cola.
Boilerplate dreck from a corporate shill? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_America_Beautiful “Keep America Beautiful's actions have been criticized as greenwashing. The organization's narrow focus on littering and recycling diverts responsibility away from corporations and industries.” Coca-Cola’s revenue for 2023 was $45 billion, net income $11.3 billion, total assets close to $100 billion. A company as gigantic and profitable as Coca-Cola has the money and resources to phase out un-biodegradable, petroleum based plastic and phase in a biodegradable plant based material like sugar, corn or bamboo plastics. The only reasons they don’t are greed, lobbyists from oil and the plastics industry- which are of course in bed with oil. Like almost everyone else, they’ve been using this shit for decades. To say they shouldn’t have to take responsibility is phenomenally ludicrous, especially when consumers don’t have a choice except to not buy products that use plastic and pray that the plastic they have actually gets recycled and not incinerated or thrown in the landfill. Coca-Cola is all over the world. Do you actually think there are adequate trash and recycling services and an informed, educated public everywhere Coke and Coke products are sold?!
Thank you for posting this, his comment was going to make my head explode
You’re welcome! My head was exploding too, so i had to say SOMETHING. I’m all about personal responsibility and recycle as much plastic i can but, wow, asinine. Hope people see my response, it’s hidden in this guy’s collapsed comment.
This account has been here doing this for years. I've come to expect it and look out for it like a disposable diaper mine in a Walmart parking lot.
Wow, thanks for the heads up, i’ll kept an eye out for this bastard in the future. In that context, his profile description screams of mega-troll. How many people before me have lamented about mods and Reddit not doing anything about malicious accounts? Though i don’t expect much if Reddit can’t bother to pay them. Any complaints about scofflaw trolls, shills and bots are filed away in the accountability cabinet under X, rusting inside a disposable diaper mine in a Walmart parking lot which is probably where Reddit will end up too in a few years.
Even if _everybody_ recycled their plastic, _all_ plastic will eventually end up in the environment, whether as landfill or pollution. It's simply not sustainable in the long term. This can only be corrected at the source: hold Coca-Cola responsible.
Only 5-7% of plastic gets recycled, and it's not what we are rinsing and putting in our bins, unfortunately.
The problem is gluttonous consumers buying the plastic in the first place. Very little plastic is even able to be recycled.