Environmental campaigners have urged Coca-Cola Co. to reduce its plastic footprint by stopping the use of single-use plastic bottles.
Greenpeace installed a “piece of art right” to the doorstep of Coca-Cola's European office on 9 April in protest against what it described as “ocean plastic pollution.”
“As the world's largest soft drinks company, Coca-Cola has a special responsibility for the plastic that is wrecking our oceans,” the campaigner group said on April 9.
According to Greenpeace data, Coke produces over 100 billion “throwaway” plastic bottles every year, which the campaigner group said mostly fail to be recovered.
Single-use plastic bottles, said Greenpeace, make up nearly 60 percent of all the drinks packaging Coke sells around the world.
“And these throwaway bottles are on the rise. Single-use plastic bottles make up 12 percent more of Coca-Cola's packaging than they did a decade ago, while the proportion of refillable containers has dropped from just under a third to just a quarter,” the group claimed.
Greenpeace also claimed that Coca-Cola was “less than halfway” towards its 2015 target to use 25 percent of recycled or renewable sources for the production of its bottles. The recycled content figure, said Greenpeace, currently stands at 7 percent on average across Coca-Cola's global plastic bottle sales.