Tell Coca-Cola: Help lead us out of the plastic waste crisis

Tell Coca-Cola: Help lead us out of the plastic waste crisis

Plastic waste is choking our oceans and killing the wildlife that call them home. If we want to do something about the plastic waste crisis, we have to go to the source.

 

Take Action
 

Coca-Cola ranked number one on the list of the world’s worst plastic polluters.

In 2020, for the third year running, Coca-Cola ranked number one on the list of the world’s worst plastic polluters — no other company was even close.1

Volunteers from around the world collected hundreds of thousands of pieces of plastic litter from parks, rivers, beaches and more in 55 countries. When they analyzed the litter, they found that more of it came from Coca-Cola products than from any other brand.

In fact, Coke products were responsible for more of the litter than the second and third-worst offenders combined.2

It doesn’t have to be this way. By switching to glass, aluminum or biodegradable materials, Coke could reduce the amount of plastic it puts out in the world.

Plastic waste is a deadly threat to ocean wildlife.

The amount of plastic waste we generate is staggering — every day, the U.S. alone averages enough plastic waste to fill a football stadium 1.5 times. Nearly half this waste is from items we only use once — soda bottles, for example.3

So much of this plastic waste ends up in the ocean, where it poses a deadly threat to marine wildlife. Sea turtles in particular are drawn to bits of plastic, which smell to them like food. Studies have found that ingesting just over a dozen pieces of plastic is all it takes to kill a turtle.4

We can stop plastic pollution at its source.

We can’t recycle our way out of this crisis. Research has found that up to 91 percent of all the plastic waste ever made never got recycled.5 If we want to stop polluting our world with plastic, we’ll need to stop making so much of it.

And that’s where Coca-Cola comes in. By replacing plastic with more sustainable products, it can not only reduce its own contribution to the plastic waste problem, but possibly also spark industry-wide change.

Tell Coca-Cola: Help lead the way to a world free of plastic waste.

Take Action

  1. Karen McVeigh, “Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle named top plastic polluters for third year in a row,” The Guardian, December 7, 2020.
  2. Karen McVeigh, “Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle named top plastic polluters for third year in a row,” The Guardian, December 7, 2020.
  3. “Full Report: Banning Single-Use Plastics,” Frontier Group, February 23, 2020.
  4. Emma Newburger, “Sea turtles are eating ocean plastic because it smells like food, study finds,” CNBC, March 9, 2020.
  5. Karen McVeigh, “Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle named top plastic polluters for third year in a row,” The Guardian, December 7, 2020.