World’s worst plastic polluter Coca-Cola named as COP27 sponsor

Cairo - Critics are saying mammoth plastic producer Coca-Cola is not the right sponsor for the upcoming world climate conference COP27 in Egypt from November 6 and 18.

Coca-Cola’s is the world’s largest corporate plastic producer and has been sponsorship approval has been slammed by Break Free From Plastic’s (BFFP) annual audits.

Launched in 2016, BFFP is an anti-plastic global initiative. It aims to identify and call out companies that continue to create vast amounts of single-use plastic waste.

Coca-Cola made voluntary commitments in 2018 to collect and responsibly process one bottle for every one sold. In its audit, BFFP discovered that the company created more plastic waste than the second and third biggest polluters combined.

Greenpeace says Coca-Cola being brought in as a climate summit sponsor is baffling. The climate meeting is called the African COP, yet corporations like Coca-Cola, working hand in hand with the fossil fuel industry, are flooding Africa with plastic.

Through the COP27 partnership, the Coca-Cola system aims to continue exploring opportunities to build climate resilience across its business.

However, critics of the move have been quick to express dismay at what they deem to be an unsuitable sponsor. Concern centres around Coca-Cola seemingly looking to improve its environmental image.

As one of the world’s largest plastic polluters and a multibillion-dollar corporation with vast resources, Coca-Cola must stop greenwashing its image.

In 2009, Coca-Cola unveiled its PlantBottle, containing around 30 percent plant-based materials. Touted as the world’s first recyclable PET plastic bottle, the company released less than 1000 of them.

Another attempt to shake up the conglomerate’s reliance on single-use plastic was announced last year. This time, in the form of a 100 percent plant-based bottle (except for the labels and caps) made from corn. Production numbers remain unclear. Emissions data for the bottles is also yet to be released.

The plastic industry, producing more than 380 million tons of material each year, is a major contributor to the worsening climate emergency.

Plastic waste sent for incineration produces more than 850 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year. The World Wildlife Fund says the planet is on track to see this rise to 2.8 billion tonnes by 2050.

Plastic waste is also responsible for significant biodiversity loss. An estimated eight million tons of plastic waste ends up in the world’s oceans. This can kill marine animals, either through choking, smothering, or microplastic poisoning, but also through habitat loss.