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Coca Cola’s secret war against bottle deposit
London, 25 January 2017 – The call to introduce a plastic bottle deposit scheme in the UK has never been louder than these past weeks. Even Prince Charles passionately advocates the introduction of a bottle deposit scheme. The stakes are the fight against litter and the plastic soup. But Coca Cola is resisting. Behind the scenes the soft drink giant is talking to ministers in order to change their minds. Only 57% of all PET bottles are recycled in the UK, as opposed to the 98% in Germany, which does have deposit refunds on all PET bottles.
While the company website puts on a nice front by saying they remain “open to dialogue about package deposit refund systems”, a leaked internal document shows their real strategy. The piece concerns a risk analysis by Coca Cola Europe. There are subjects to monitor, to prepare for and to fight against (a section headlined ‘Fight Back’). Deposit return is part of the latter. Greenpeace UK therefore accuses Coca Cola of not taking any responsibility for their bottles in the environment.
Coca Cola’s position calls to mind an incident in 2015. Coca Cola was said to put pressure on supermarket chains Aldi and Lidl in the Netherlands to eventually abandon their own closed and successful deposit refund systems. In some provinces of Australia Coca Cola even instituted legal proceedings to stop the introduction of bottle deposit schemes.
Coca Cola profiles itself as a sustainable company, but operates with a hidden agenda. If Coca Cola has anything to say about it, the company will continue to submerge the world in plastic bottles for years to come.
Purely for profit.
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