With less than six months to go before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, which boasts to be the most sustainable in history, this ranking is a significant blemish on their record. Coca-Cola, one of the Games' main sponsors, remains the world's leading "plastic polluter," according to the 2023 ranking published on Wednesday, February 7, by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Break Free From Plastic.
This is the sixth straight year that the American brand, the longest-standing partner of the International Olympic Committee, has taken first place on this dubious podium. This year, the iconic soft drinks brand came in ahead of Nestlé and Unilever. Danone, the leading French company, featured in the top 10, in eighth place.
This ranking is based on the amount of plastic litter collected during organized collection drives in public spaces (beaches, rivers, parks, forests, streets, etc.). In 2023, a total of 250 collections were undertaken in 41 countries by almost 9,000 volunteers from some 100 associations. Their mission to identify the brands behind the garbage was not always an easy one. A total of 537,719 pieces of plastic waste were collected and checked.
Coca-Cola set a new record with 33,820 pieces, compared with just over 31,000 in 2022. Coca-Cola branded waste was found in 40 of the 41 countries audited, as opposed to just 30 for its rival PepsiCo, which had more plastic waste in terms of volume. In any case, the criterion of the number of countries was the decisive factor in this global ranking.
Coca-Cola's perennial status as the brand most often found in garbage collections has had an impact on the multinational's marketing communications, with the launch of its "world without waste" campaign in 2018.
In 2018, the US company signed an agreement with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the United Nations Environment Program, whereby it pledged to reduce its use of virgin plastic by 20% by 2025, compared with 2019 levels. However, it is not currently on track to meet this target. Between 2019 and 2022, the volume of plastic packaging produced by the soft drinks manufacturer continued to grow, from 3 million to 3.43 million tonnes, and the share of virgin plastic increased by 8%, according to the foundation's latest annual review. "We've made progress, but we still have a long way to go," Coca-Cola told Le Monde.
Paris 2024, which has set itself the goal of slashing the Games' carbon footprint in half, has pledged to halve the amount of single-use plastic. Coca-Cola will manage the supply of beverages as the official supplier. During the two-week Olympic and Paralympic period, nearly 20 million soft drinks will be consumed at the various venues.
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