Coca-Cola reveals how much plastic it really makes

It has been some time in coming, but Coca-Cola, long known to be one of the biggest producers of plastic packaging, has admitted that it produces a staggering 3.3 million tons of plastic packaging per year, the rough equivalent of 200,000 bottles every minute.

The company had previously refused to release the mind-boggling figure, but this week finally disclosed the information to The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity that has been campaigning alongside UN Environment to convince governments and the world’s largest plastic producing corporations to commit to reduce and ultimately eliminate unnecessary plastic packaging by 2025.

The exact figures of the plastic usage aren’t broken down in the report, but Coca-Cola’s reported volume is equal to 108 billion polyethylene terephthalate or PET plastic bottles per year – over a fifth of the global PET bottle output, which stands at about 500 billion per year.

About 150 companies have agreed to commit to the foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative, but many of the top-tier corporations – including L’Oreal, Pepsico, H&M, Walmart, and others – continue to refuse to own up to how much plastic packaging they produce.

When Greenpeace cleaned the Freedom Island beach, it posted a tally of the brand names of the discarded plastic its volunteers had collected. Nestlé ranked first, Unilever second.

“Litterbugs aren’t the only ones at fault,” said Greenpeace’s Abigail Aguilar. “We believe that the ones producing and promoting the use of single-use plastics have a major role in the whole problem.”

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