What a COP OUT

Coca-Cola. You know, the company, named the world’s biggest plastic polluter for 4 years in a row. Yes that giant polluter has just been named as the sponsor for the most important climate negotiations yet. 

We can’t tolerate this. Read on if you agree and want to take action.

The Egyptian government, who are hosting COP 27, have recently announced Coca-Cola as a “supporter sponsor” and followed this up with a series of social media posts. This is exactly what Coca-Cola want – to be associated with climate talks and to be given a non-challenging platform to communicate all that it is doing on environmental issues.

You wouldn’t know this from the COP 27 official statement but as well as being named the world’s biggest plastic polluter for 4 years in a row, Coca-Cola’s global manufacturing sites produced approximately 5.49 million metric tons of greenhouse gas (GHG).

On top of this we know that they’ve repeatedly tried to greenwash their way out of their environmental impact (remember when we had to call them out for claiming their throw-away plastic bottles weren’t single-use!). When you add in their tax avoidance, it’s poor supply chain management and lack of interaction with trade unions and human rights record you have a devastating corporate cocktail of what we shouldn’t be showcasing at COP27.

This is a company that pumps out over 100 billion throw-away plastic bottles a year (we calculate that this is over 333 bottles every 0.1 seconds!). We have no reason to think this figure is reducing. If you dig down far enough into Coca-Cola’s statements, you find their bottom line. We don’t think this should be profiled at climate negotiations!