Coke encouraged to use recycled plastic

The Coca-Cola Company doesn't use recycled plastic for its bottles, which results in billions of plastic bottles going to landfills or incinerators.

July 30, 1999
Web posted at: 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT)

The Coca-Cola Company should live up to its promise to use recycled plastic in its soda bottles, recycling advocates declared Wednesday.

The Coca-Cola Company announced in 1990 that it would begin making soda bottles out of recycled plastic. Due to market conditions, the company abandoned the plan four years ago.

"As a result, billions of plastic bottles which could be used to make new bottles go to landfills or incinerators every year," said Bill Sheenan, coordinator for the GrassRoots Recycling Network.

The network has inserted an action alert in the most recent cycle of telephone bills sent to the 300,000 long distance customers of Working Assets, a long distance and credit card company that markets itself as being environmentally friendly.

"Every day the company sells more than 20 million sodas in plastic bottles here, and not one of them contains an ounce of recycled content. The result is billions of soda bottles are wasted each year," the alert reads.

Working Assets customers are being encouraged to call Douglas Ivester, chief executive officer of Coca-Cola, and ask him to live up to the 1990 promise to use soft drink bottles made from recycled plastic.

"Our policy regarding the use of recycled-content materials and products is that they must meet government regulatory approval; achieve The Coca-Cola Company's stringent quality requirements, and cost equal to or less than competing processes relevant to local market conditions," the company's web site says.

The company decided not to use recycled plastic in the United States because local market conditions were cost prohibitive. "But more cost-effective technologies have been developing, technologies passing U.S. Food and Drug Administration review," said Lance King, a network campaigner.

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