The other day I ran across an article about Coca Cola corporation’s green-washing about its plastic bottles, and how they are supposed to be 25% marine plastics, that is, plastics recovered from the oceans and seas, and how the company expects that by 2030 they will collect and recycle a can or a bottle, for every bottle they sell. Some of the articles and information -duly researched by serious organizations and media- however, beg to paint a different picture: of the 470 billion plastic bottles produced in 2020, 25% came from Coca-Cola, and the company is not even at 10% of its 2030 target or any of its other environmental targets - I have not checked if they have reached their growth and profitability targets for 2020, 2021, 2022, and now 2023.
Now I am not going to harp on Coca-Cola, there are more competent and knowledgeable people to do that. But do you realize? One single corporation produces 120 billion bottles of plastic per year, fills them up with super-doses of sugar and caffeine laced chemicals called Coke, Sprite, and you name it, and ships it off to the world that gobbles it up into its body and organs to be transformed into fat and obesity -yes I know there are diet cokes, coca zeros, and many other sugar-free substances, but if it is not one thing, it is another. Also let’s not just focus on Coke, every consumer drink company is doing similar things.
This is a hot topic, and I am certainly not going to solve it here. I personally think plastic is an incredible invention, and the problem is not the plastic, but it is our mentality of seeking ease of disposal and throwaway culture. Used intelligently, plastic is great- cheap, versatile, multi-faceted - and it saddens me to see how a great invention went from a miracle product to a loathed substance.
To close in humour, though, I am including this memorable scene from the classic 1967 film, The Graduate - with Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman - about plastics.
Paris, March 6, 2023
Zeejay