Break Free From Plastic slams Coca-Cola partnership with The Ocean Cleanup

08 Jun 2021 --- The Coca-Cola Company is partnering with Dutch technological non-profit The Ocean Cleanup to intercept plastic waste in rivers before it enters the world’s oceans.

The partnership will deploy 15 semi-autonomous solar-powered river cleanup ships named “Interceptors” over the next 18 months worldwide. Two Interceptors included in the partnership have already been installed by The Ocean Cleanup in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic and Can Tho, Vietnam.

However, Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) is criticizing Coca-Cola’s partnership with The Ocean Cleanup as “only an end-of-pipe intervention that will not stop the worldwide plastic pollution crisis for which Coca-Cola is co-responsible.”

PackagingInsights speaks with both BFFP and Coca-Cola about their respective views on river waste cleanups, deposit return systems (DRS), and other efforts needed to prevent single-use plastic waste.

“Hardest decision to take”
Partnering with Coca-Cola is projected to accelerate The Ocean Cleanup’s progress in eliminating plastic waste from oceans. In 2020, independent verification body DNV verified its total catch to have been 235,505 kg. However, 1,000 rivers worldwide still emit nearly 80 percent of river-carried plastic into oceans.

In a Twitter video, The Ocean Cleanup founder Boyan Slat shared Coca-Cola’s role in the partnership would not just be funding the project, but also assisting with government relations, setting up global operators and finding suitable recycling infrastructures.Plastic debris on El Quetzalito Beach, Guatemala (All image credits: The Ocean Cleanup). 

“When [Coca Cola] approached us with the offer two years ago to help, I found this one of the hardest decisions to make. Should we work together with a company that produces a lot of single-use plastics?” Slat questions in the video.

“This is precisely why we should work together. Rather than excluding a company like [Coca-Cola], I believe they should have the opportunity to help,” he says.

PackagingInsights has reached out to The Ocean Cleanup for further comment.

Assuming responsibility? Recycling versus cleanups
Cleanups are “an easy way for companies like Coca-Cola to give the impression that they care about plastic pollution,” says Emma Priestland, BFFP corporate campaigns coordinator.

“They generate positive media and help individuals feel like something is being done about the problem, when the reality is cleanups are distracting from the real solutions for plastic reduction: reuse and refill.”

BFFPR argues there would be “no need for cleanups if plastic bottles never reach the rivers or oceans.” At the same time, Coca-Cola affirms it wants to be “part of the solution in addressing the critical issue of packaging waste, rather than part of the problem.”

Ben Jordan, Coca-Cola’s senior director of environmental policy, maintains the company is “making progress” to reduce its plastic footprint. “Until we’ve achieved our goal to get every bottle back, we want to support and advance the teams and technologies that are working to protect the biodiversity of our oceans.”

“In combining our scale and global network with The Ocean Cleanup’s vision and technology, we believe we can have real impact.”

For the third consecutive year, BFFP’s Brand Audit 2020 Report named Coca-Cola alongside PepsiCo and Nestlé as the three most plastic polluting FMCG companies. This partnership aims to expedite the deployment of Interceptors across 15 rivers worldwide by the end of 2022. 

The 2019 edition also blasted FMCG heavyweights for only offering “false solutions to the plastic pollution crisis they have created” – listing cleanups and support for recycling programs.

Thoughts on DRS 
BFFP calls for Coca-Cola to tackle its pollution “at the source instead of at the end of the pipe,” pointing to DRS as a solution. Priestland argues Coca-Cola has “spent decades lobbying against DRS legislation that is proven to reduce plastic pollution,” but should instead support such legislation as a “matter of urgency.”

Responding to the allegations, Jordan states: “We know well-designed DRS improves collection in those markets where the right infrastructure exists.”

“In Europe, where an effective alternative doesn’t already exist, we have been clear that we think this is absolutely the right way to go and we’ll partner to support that. There are other collection schemes that have been proven to achieve relatively high recycling rates,” he continues. 

“We need to develop fit-for-purpose infrastructure in each place, working alongside industry partners and collection schemes locally to get to our end goal as effectively as possible – which is always 100 percent collection.”

World Without Waste
Coca-Cola has set three main global goals in its “holistic vision” to tackle plastic waste, called “World Without Waste”:

• Make 100 percent of its packaging recyclable globally by 2025 and use at least 50 percent recycled materials in packaging by 2030.
• Collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one sold by 2030.
• Work together to support a healthy, debris-free environment. 

It also recently set a goal to use approximately 20 percent less virgin plastic derived from fossil fuels worldwide than it does today by 2025, depending on business growth. Some of the company’s recent plastic reduction strides have included hitting 50 percent recycled PET (rPET) milestones in Great Britain, developing sip-sized rPET bottles, and exploring paper bottle alternatives.

Plastic catch categorized into bottle caps on board the vessel during the System 001/B campaign.  Priestland highlights that Coca-Cola produced 200,000 bottles per minute in 2019, calling the figure “a staggering amount of plastic pollution that is either burned, landfilled or dumped in the environment, with only a tiny amount being recycled.”

“It’s no wonder that recycling cannot keep up and cleanups hardly scratch the surface of the amount of plastic flowing into the environment,” she adds.

However, Jordan asserts Coca-Cola is investing locally in every market to increase the recovery of its bottles and cans. “We are also investing to accelerate key innovations that will help to reduce waste. This includes new enhanced recycling technologies that allow us to recycle poor quality PET plastic, often destined for incineration or landfill, back to high-quality food packaging material.”

Ultimately, The Ocean Cleanup’s founder says he chose to partner with Coca-Cola because with the FMCG giant’s help, the river waste project “can be more impactful, which at the end of the day is the only thing that counts.”

Slat concludes in the Twitter video message: “For those who have been sending messages to [Coca-Cola] over the years to ask them to support us – thank you for helping to make this happen.”

By Anni Schleicher