Take ownership of the plastic problem…through investing

You can become part-owner of the biggest plastic polluter in the world, and then tell them to clean up their act. That’s right. Your money can give you a voice at the company that pumps out over 200,000 plastic bottles a minute – Coca-Cola! Now there is something we never thought we would write, but hear us out, this is important. 

What does investing have to do with stopping plastic pollution, I hear you ask? Good question. Well, we’ve teamed up with our amigos at Tulipshare, and we have a plan….. For those who don’t know, Tulipshare is a shareholder activist platform that empowers individuals and everyday activists to become investors that can demand change from some of the biggest (and most polluting) companies in the world. By joining a community of investors, and strategically choosing who we invest in, this unifies and amplifies our investing power with other like-minded investors to make their voice heard within big business and to push for powerful structural change. So, for example, if enough people invest in Coca-Cola, we will have a powerful mandate and owner voting power to demand real change from within. 

So, what do we want Coca-Cola to do? Well, it’s simple really – we want them to commit to an ambitious target of reducing the number of single-use plastic bottles they distribute annually by 25%. This would be from a baseline of the company’s current estimated global production. currently, Coca-Cola sells more than 100 billion plastic bottles every year, or 200,000 bottles a minute.

Everything else they have been talking about – from using more recycled content in their bottles to scaling global recycling of the bottles they create, is a distraction – the longer they   greenwash about these false solutions, and convince the world they’re taking action, the more bottles are created, pumping millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere and pulling our beaches, rivers and communities with single-use plastic.

We need them to focus on the one solution we KNOW works – produce less waste in the first place and invest in reuse and refill.

Ultimately, we need action from all these companies. But it makes sense to start with the worst offender. As well as being named the world’s biggest plastic polluter for 4 years in a row (!), Coca-Cola pumps out hundreds of thousands of single-use bottle every minute.

They’re single handedly responsible for one fifth of the world’s entire PET plastic output. 

Add onto that Coca-Cola’s global manufacturing sites produced approximately 5.49 million metric tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) and you can see why Coca-Cola are the target of this campaign. 

We’ve always been their “critical friend” –  calling out their greenwash or completely inappropriate sponsorship of climate negotiations – but this campaign is different. This time we’re talking their language, and using the power of money, and corporate frameworks, to get them to act.

Because it works! All Tulipshare campaigns have one clear intention; to effect positive change from within large companies. By being in the AGMs and owning shares, these changes CAN happen.  

Last year Tulipshare launched a campaign asking Johnson & Johnson to take cancer-causing talc out of their Baby Powder, globally. Less than a year later, the multinational company announced it would discontinue the sale of their talc-based formula – a huge victory for shareholder activism.