The Coke Machine - Michael Blanding [70]
To celebrate its effort, the company created an “eco-fashion” line of clothing made from recycled plastic; and, of course, it launched a new ad campaign, premiering during American Idol in January 2009. Called “Give It Back,” it featured people tossing Coke bottles into recycling bins, only to see them pop out anew from slots of Coke machines. To drive home the message, Coke began working with parks, zoos, and sports stadiums to prominently display red recycling bins in the shape of Coke’s hourglass bottle.
Despite the happy imagery, the truth about Coke’s recycling efforts was much less impressive. An initial pledge by Coca-Cola Enterprises to use 30 percent recycled PET (rPET) in its bottles in the United States by 2010 was quietly downgraded to a more modest 10 percent “where commercially viable,” creating a loophole big enough to drive a hybrid trailer through. In fact, that goal was even less than what Coke had pledged back in the early 1990s, one in a long line of promises on recycling it had reneged on because of “sustainability issues.” Recycled PET, the company claimed, was just too expensive in the United States to use on any wide scale. In other words, the environment was worth taking into account only when it didn’t cost additional money.
Now with the creation of the Spartanburg plant, the company claimed to have solved the problem, assuring that “the demand for recovered bottles remains strong,” according to Scott Vitters, Coke’s director of sustainable packaging. The problem with PET, however, has never been one of demand, but of supply. Carpet and car part manufacturers have always competed to get their hands on PET for industrial uses. But to get the high-quality PET needed to make into bottles is much more difficult. Unlike other materials, which can be recycled many times without degrading, PET quickly degrades when melted down repeatedly, making clear, transparent PET hard to come by—to say nothing of the additional costs to clean the material to make it “food-grade.”
The only thing that could drive down those costs, then, was a greater availability of PET—especially high-quality PET needed for beverage containers. Coke’s new plant, however, does nothing to address this side of the equation, since it purchases 98 percent of its material from already existing curbside recycling programs (the other 2 percent will come from Coke’s recycling bins at NASCAR races and other events). In fact, according to industry trade sources, Coke’s plant will if anything make the situation worse by driving up the cost for recycled PET with a huge new demand for raw materials.
Meanwhile, Coke has done relatively little to help the supply side of the equation. In addition to its branded recycling bins, it has supported education programs such as Keep America Beautiful, which gives grants to local communities to support curbside programs, and a new program called RecycleBank, which gives consumers coupons for local businesses depending on how much they recycle. Such efforts have increased recycling rates in some municipalities with low rates to begin with, but so far hasn’t succeeded in driving rates above the 30 percent national average—a far cry from Coke’s 100 percent goal.
“It’s a series of building blocks,” says Lisa Manley, a spokeswoman for Coke on sustainability issues. “[We] start with recycled content in our packages, then continue to support community recycling efforts, and with that we’ll be able to drive more material to Spartanburg. It’s a longer journey, but they are the right steps.” Even while Coke urges incrementalism, it has led the fight against the most proven means of increasing recycling rates—state bottle bills that charge a 5 or 10 cent deposit on containers that is redeemable when they are returned. In the eleven states