To the people jumping into the logic leaps in the article.
I agree the reasoning is non-sensical but the target should remain.
Coca-Cola produces 110 _billion_ PET bottles a year. [0]
And virtually all the plastic produced by Coca-Cola is 'new' plastic made from Crude Oil.
It is absolutely beyond cynical for companies like Coca-Cola to promote recycling/sustainability and then virtually not use any recycled pellets to feed their gargantous bottle production.
> This milestone means Coca-Cola will have increased the amount of recycled plastic material in smaller bottles from 50% to 100%. Coca-Cola’s use of recycled plastics in Great Britain now saves 29,000 tonnes of virgin plastic each year – the equivalent of 2,292 double decker buses.
I want to be positive but this is happening too slowly and only in markets where consumers value it (Scandinavian countries, UK, Germany) so without wanting to be cynical this is mostly brand management more than sustainability.
Using recycled plastic is still more expensive than new plastic, so unless they are willing to take the profit hit this is mostly talk with little walk and only in the markets where it will make a difference for their bottom line.
"…so unless they are willing to take the profit hit…"
This is solved by simple regulation. Put a levy on new plastic to the point where reusable is cheaper. The only impediment is political will and that can be changed by citizens lobbying their parliamentary reps.
Out of curiosity, is packagingnews.co.uk a site you visit frequently for industry news or the first that come up on google when you searched for coca-cola's recycling activities in the UK?
It's one that I know and flick through regularly. It covers the wider aspects of the packaging industry and has a good reputation for following what's going on.
> And virtually all the plastic produced by Coca-Cola is 'new' plastic made from Crude Oil.
To me this is one of the big arguments in favor of plastic bottles. Hydrocarbons locked up as plastic waste in landfills seems far preferable to me to it ending up as CO2 in the air, especially as it displaces the energy and therefore carbon intensive processes of creating glass or aluminium bottles.
Of course in an ideal world we'd recycle every aluminium can I'd much prefer people use those. But in the US at least we only recycle 50% of aluminium cans but are far better at making sure waste ends up in landfills so at our margins I'd prefer people use plastic bottles to aluminium cans. If we could get aluminium cans recycling rates up to 90% I think that would flip my preferences and I'd love for us to figure out how to do that. And not every country can afford to have garbage can around that are collected, sweep trash from the street and dispose of it, or even have landfills at all. And in those places the calculus is different.
> It is absolutely beyond cynical for companies like Coca-Cola to promote recycling/sustainability and then virtually not use any recycled pellets to feed their gargantous bottle production.
It's a huge ship to turn. The best answer is to stop drinking Coke and drink water instead. We're the ones buying it.
Asking people not to buy is a huge cop out, and does the usual maneuver of painting companies as victims of consumers. Companies are externalizing their packing and shipping costs at the expense of huge environmental loses for everyone and at huge profits for them.
Governments and regulators should regulate this out of existence. Unfortuntely they are for the moment spinelessly lobbyable.
Asking consumers to curb comsumption is a fool's errand, ask consumers to demand their representatives defend the environmental interests of everything on this planet.
> does the usual maneuver of painting companies as victims of consumers
No. You're overlaying a victim mentality onto the situation, where there was none.
I don't know why you believe that us trying to get "spinelessly lobbyable" governments and regulators to fix this is a good idea, but that it's a "fool's errand" for us to drink less Coke until they fix it.
Our spending is much more directly effective (and cost-effective) vote for companies to change than voting for professional representatives to make speeches at them.
I do not know how much energy can be extracted from plastic bottles by burning them, but ist using oil for plastic bottles and then burning the plastic bottles better than burning the oil straight away?
1) You are putting a bunch of plasticizers and all sorts of chemicals in the mix that you probably don't want to get volatile.
2) You have to spend extra fuel (coal/gas/wood) getting a furnace up to the right temperature to incinerate this. (You can't really startup a fire with plastic).
I agree the reasoning is non-sensical but the target should remain.
Coca-Cola produces 110 _billion_ PET bottles a year. [0]
And virtually all the plastic produced by Coca-Cola is 'new' plastic made from Crude Oil.
It is absolutely beyond cynical for companies like Coca-Cola to promote recycling/sustainability and then virtually not use any recycled pellets to feed their gargantous bottle production.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/cokes-re...