GRRN Archive 2002

GRRN Archive 2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For Further Information
March 25, 1999 Tom Padia or Bruce Goddard
  Alameda County Recycling Board
  (510) 614-1699

Agency Endorses Consumer Action Against Coca Cola
Targets Non-Recycled Plastic Bottles

     The Alameda County Source Reduction and Recycling Board has endorsed the consumer action against Coca-Cola put forward by the Georgia-based GrassRoots Recycling Network. The Board has joined with citizen advocacy groups and environmental organizations throughout the country including the Sierra Club California Waste Committee, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the Earth Island Institute, and the California Resource Recovery Association to urge Coke to utilize recycled content materials in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) soda bottles.

     The goal of the consumer action campaign is to reverse the alarming decline in the recycling rate for plastic bottles - which are replacing recyclable glass and aluminum containers at a rapid rate.

     A fact sheet on the Coca-Cola campaign, prepared by the GrassRoots Recycling Network is attached, along with a copy of the resolution adopted by the Recycling Board.

     The Recycling Board was created by the voters of Alameda County in 1990 and operates as a specialized arm of the Alameda County Waste Management Authority. It is funded through a $6 per ton landfill disposal fee at the Altamont and Vasco Road landfills. Board members are composed of elected public officials, selected by the Waste Management Authority, and professional experts in specified areas of waste reduction, selected by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

     For more information about the Coca-Cola consumer action, interested parties may contact Bill Sheehan at (706) 613-7121, or visit the GrassRoots Recycling Network website at www.grrn.org. Further information is also available through the Recycling Board website at www.stopwaste.org.

COKE CAMPAIGN OVERVIEW POLICY ISSUES

The key policy for groups supporting the campaign is holding consumer product manufacturers responsible for product and packaging waste, as well as the often more important environmental, social and economic costs of extracting natural resources and processing them. In the case of Coca-Cola, the campaign is a protest of the wasteful corporate push to use non-recycled plastic bottles.

Targeting Coca-Cola focuses public and governmental attention on the need for voluntary or mandatory producer responsibility. Coca-Cola promised voluntary action in 1990 in the face of probable state and federal mandates. When the threat appeared to recede Coke quietly abandoned its program. By exposing corporate backsliding on environmental commitments by a consumer product industry giant, the campaign is sending a message to the industry as a whole.

PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH PLASTIC COKE BOTTLES

1. RECYCLING AND PACKAGING WASTE

  • Coca-Cola is abandoning the decades old practice of packaging its soft drinks in recycled content containers (aluminum cans and glass bottles) in favor of non-recycled plastic. The impact of Coke's action is undermining a large part of our nation's recycling infrastructure.

  • Plastic waste is increasing ten times faster than recycling of plastic soda bottles. Coke used 600 million pounds of PET plastic in 1997 to make soda bottles sold in the United States, which is more than the entire amount of PET soda bottles recycled that year.

  • Recycling rates for PET soda bottles have dropped 3 years in a row, from a peak of 50 percent to only 36 percent in 1997. Coke is the industry leader with 45 percent market share. So its packaging choices affect the entire industry.

    2. HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

  • The most serious health and environmental impacts associated with packaging choices, and Coke's plastic soda bottle in particular, stem from extraction of non-renewable resources (oil and gas for the plastics industry), energy consumption in manufacturing (production of virgin PET plastic is highly energy intensive), and in the refining of raw materials and industrial processes used to produce plastics (production of PET for soda bottles and associated materials generate toxic chemicals posing a risk to worker safety and public health). Recycled PET reduces all of the associated health and environmental impacts compared to production of PET from raw materials.

    3. CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY

  • Coca-Cola is a highly visible example of an increasing number of multinational corporations that have broken environmental commitments. If one of the most admired corporations in America can drop a commitment on an issue of bedrock consensus (recycling) without penalty, that gives a green light for other corporations to do follow suit.

  • Holding corporations accountable for wasteful products and packaging, and encouraging or requiring redesign of products to eliminate or reduce waste, is an important action to reverse the exploitation of natural resources and attendant pollution that is ruining the forests and wild habitats that we all value.

  • The campaign links the most popular environmental symbol -- recycling -- with fundamental solutions (rather than end-of-the-pipe fixes) to basic environmental problems.

    WHAT SORT OF GROUPS SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN?

  • National environmental and consumer organizations, including Earth Island Institute, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace Toxics Campaign, Coop America, and Clean Water Action chapters.

  • Student groups, including PIRGs, SEAC chapters.

  • Numerous community recycling organizations and businesses (87 organizations and leaders as of January 10, 1999).

    IS THE CAMPAIGN A BOYCOTT?

  • Not at this time. The campaign is a consumer action in which the major action is mailing plastic soda bottles.

    DO PARTICIPANTS HAVE TO BUY COKES?

  • No. People can scavenge empty plastic Coke bottles. Unfortunately, finding littered bottles is all too easy.

    WHY NOT INCLUDE PEPSI?

  • Coca-Cola is the market giant: Globally, Coke has 50 percent of the world soft drink market compared to Pepsi's 20 percent.

  • What Coke does, Pepsi will follow. In 1990, Coke and Pepsi's announcements of plans to start using recycled plastic followed each other within 20 minutes.

    Prepared by the GrassRoots Recycling Network



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