Coca-Cola Reduces Packaging Sustainability Goals #

Coca-Cola has revised its packaging sustainability targets, leading to significant backlash from environmental activists. Traditionally criticized as a major contributor to plastic pollution, the company announced it now plans to incorporate 35% to 40% recycled material in its packaging by 2035. This represents a reduction from its earlier target of 50% by 2030. Coca-Cola attributed this shift to insights gained from past sustainability initiatives and identified challenges.

The company also altered its recycling objectives. Initially, it aimed to recycle the plastic equivalent of every bottle produced by 2030. This has been scaled back to ensuring the collection of 70% to 75% of bottles and cans entering the market annually, although no specific timeline for this goal was provided.

Pollution from single-use plastic is an ongoing global issue. Plastic materials are primarily derived from harmful fossil fuel-based polymers. “We remain committed to building long-term business resilience and earning our social license to operate through our evolved voluntary environmental goals,” Coca-Cola stated, acknowledging the complexity of the challenges and the need for more efficient resource allocation.

Critics describe the revised goals as “short-sighted, irresponsible” changes that deserve condemnation. “The company’s new and weak recycling-related pledges won’t make a dent in its overall plastic use.”

Earlier this year, Coca-Cola introduced new bottles for its product range using 100% recycled plastic, with an estimated reduction of 83 million pounds of plastic in its US supply chain—equivalent to two billion bottles.

Coca-Cola has been named the world’s top plastic polluter for six consecutive years. This year alone, its waste count was 33,830 out of over half a million pieces of plastic waste audited globally, with Coca-Cola bottles frequently found discarded in public areas. “Coca-Cola’s latest move is a masterclass in greenwashing, ditching previously announced reuse targets, and choosing to flood the planet with more plastic they can’t even collect and recycle effectively.”