Environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) has criticised Coca-Cola over not doing enough to recycle plastic, despite a high profile commitment by the business earlier this year to reduce its plastic footprint.
At the beginning of October, Coca-Cola presented a new flagship product: 300 sample plastic bottles, partially made of plastic trash from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
'Innovative methods have made it possible to transform used plastic into new plastic,' the company said at the time.
Deutsche Umwelthilfe criticised the move, saying it was ironic that "the biggest consumer of plastic in the world is presenting a bottle produced from recycled plastic in order to present itself as environmentalist".
'Wolf In Sheep's Clothing'
According to Barbara Metz, the deputy CEO of DUH, Coca Cola is a 'wolf in sheep's clothing' when it comes to dealing with plastic waste.
“A report from the ’Break Free From Plastic’ movement, some 484 clean up campaigns underway in 50 countries have revealed that Coca-Cola is particularly responsible for plastic pollution," she said.
Metz says that Coca-Cola should only use returnable bottles. Furthermore the soft drink giant has to stand up for a better global deposit system, Metz said.
Coca Cola’s sample bottles contain 25 per cent plastic from bottles, which were retrieved from either the ocean or the beach. They were collected by volunteers and fishermen in Spain and Portugal.
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Martin Maier. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
