Friend,

Coca-Cola needs to step up its game on plastic waste.

For the third year in a row, the company has been named the world's top plastic polluter -- worse than the next two biggest polluters combined.1

Plastic waste is piling up at a record pace -- and to address it, we need companies such as Coca-Cola to reduce plastic in their products and take responsibility for their entire life cycle.

But Coca-Cola won't act without hearing from consumers. Tell Coca-Cola: It's time to move beyond plastic.

This year, volunteers in 55 countries collected nearly 350,000 pieces of plastic litter in parks, beaches, rivers and other open spaces, and of those items clearly marked with a consumer brand, Coca-Cola was far and away the most common.2

There's no need for Coca-Cola -- or any company -- to be making such a huge contribution to our plastic waste crisis when there are so many viable alternatives to single-use plastics, such as glass, aluminum, biodegradable products or 100 percent post-consumer material.

Yet Coca-Cola announced earlier this year it will continue to use plastic bottles. And its waste-reduction efforts are focused on recycling programs, even though that's been shown to not be enough to effectively tackle plastic waste -- up to 91 percent of all the plastic waste ever made has not been recycled.3

We're calling on Coca-Cola to take a new path forward and break free from the single-use plastics that are choking our communities and environment. Will you join us, Friend?

Nearly 100,000 tons of plastic -- enough to fill one and a half football stadiums -- are thrown away each day in the U.S. alone. And until now, the companies that make and sell all of this plastic have borne little to no responsibility for the mess.4

But major brands such as Coca-Cola have the power to spark industry-wide change and help move toward a system that rewards companies for creating reusable, repairable and resilient products and reducing waste.

We know that when enough consumers speak up, these companies clean up their act. For example, following consumer outcry, grocery giant Kroger committed to phasing out plastic bags in its stores across the country by 2025.5

With your voice, you can help convince Coca-Cola to take bold steps toward reducing its plastic waste. Tell Coca-Cola: Be a leader in moving our country beyond plastic.

Thank you,

Faye Park
President

1. Karen McVeigh, "Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle named top plastic polluters for third year in a row," The Guardian, December 7, 2020.
2. Karen McVeigh, "Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle named top plastic polluters for third year in a row," The Guardian, December 7, 2020.
3. Karen McVeigh, "Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle named top plastic polluters for third year in a row," The Guardian, December 7, 2020.
4. "Break the Waste Cycle," U.S. PIRG Education Fund, October 29, 2020.
5. Merrit Kennedy, "Attention, Shoppers: Kroger Says It Is Phasing Out Plastic Bags," NPR, August 23, 2018.