Coca-Cola: Bring Back Refillable Bottles in the U.S.
The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company is the world's biggest consumer-facing seller of plastics, producing almost one quarter (23%) – of the world’s PET plastic bottles. But it was not always this way...
In fact, Coca-Cola was an early leader in refillables, pioneering a waste-free system for fountain drinks and creating a successful deposit return system that ensured an impressive 96% of its glass bottles were reused.
Unfortunately, between the 1950s-70s, the company gutted its own refillable infrastructure in the U.S. in favor of single-use bottles that pushed the cost of dealing with huge amounts of its new plastic packaging waste onto the public, despite knowing full well that it would be far worse for the environment and taxpayers.
Since then, Coca-Cola has also worked tirelessly to block federal and state legislative efforts to hold the beverage industry accountable for the costs of its packaging waste by lobbying against Bottle Bills and bans on single-use containers.
In 2022, Coca-Cola announced its intent to sell 25% of its beverages globally in refillable containers by 2030. But the company has virtually no refillable bottles in circulation here in the U.S., except one small pilot project in Texas and they've shared no target for refillables in the U.S.
Join us in urging Coca-Cola to go back to the future by bringing back at least 25% refillable bottles here in the U.S. by 2030, and supporting mandatory beverage container deposit laws (a.k.a. "Bottle Bills") with refill requirements.
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To:
The Coca-Cola Company
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[Your Name]
In 2022, Coca-Cola announced a pledge to sell 25% of your product in refillable packaging globally. But aside from a small refillables pilot in El Paso, Texas, you have not signaled any intention to bring back the refillable bottle in the U.S. – your flagship market – despite the potential of refillables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, plastic pollution, and harm to environmental justice communities. Nowhere is the shift away from single-use packaging more important than in the U.S., which produces more wasted plastic bottles per capita than any other country in the world.
Despite your “Every Bottle Back” campaign slogan, your results on the ground paint a very different picture. For five years running, Coca-Cola has held the dubious distinction of being the world’s #1 plastic polluter in #BreakFreeFromPlastic’s annual global Brand Audit. Your plastic packaging pollutes the environment on every continent.
Yet a century ago, your company pioneered the use of the refillable bottle, collecting 96% of your bottles back for refill by using a deposit-return system. The twin crises of climate change and plastic pollution along with the devastating consequences of plastic on fenceline communities such as those living in what’s now dubbed “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana demand solutions commensurate with the problem.
We are calling on the Coca-Cola Company to embrace its capacity for industry leadership on this issue by:
1) Bringing back Coca-Cola’s refillable glass bottle and extending your 25% refill commitment to the US market.
2) Pledging support for mandatory container deposit return systems, also known as "Bottle Bills" that include refill requirements.
In taking these steps, you can become a leading company on reuse and make a significant contribution to scaling true solutions on behalf of the entire beverage sector.