Panorama (1953–…): Season 69, Episode 38 - Coca-Cola's 100 Billion Bottle Problem - full transcript

The soft drinks industry produces
470 billion plastic bottles every year,

designed to be used just
once and then thrown away.

A quarter of them are made
by one company, Coca-Cola.

Nearly half of Coke's bottles
end up burned, dumped or littered.

The problem has gotten so bad,
and the problem is now visual.

In the face of public backlash,

Coke have come up with a bold plan
to tackle their plastic pollution problem.

Simply put, we want to
get to a world without waste,

so we want to collect back from
the marketplace every bottle and can,

or the equivalent of every
bottle and can, that we have sold.

But can they deliver on their promises?



Ultimately, it comes
down to shareholder value.

They want their pound of flesh.

We visit some of the
countries hit hardest by

plastic pollution and find
things are getting worse.

Coca-Cola says they will collect one

bottle for each bottle
they sell in Uganda,

but they can never do that.

Is the world's largest
soft drinks producer

able to turn the tide on plastic waste?

It used to be rare to see a Coke bottle at

the side of the road or
washed up on a beach.

In the 1950s, Coke
was sold in glass bottles.

ADVERT: Here's refreshment you
can enjoy quickly and conveniently,

and a place to put the
bottle when you're through.



You would get two cents back
when you returned the bottle.

Coca-Cola would collect the
bottles, wash and re-use them.

When the beverage producers
were selling refillable bottles,

they had to pay for the costs
of operations associated with

getting the bottles back,
washing them, refilling them, etc.

VOICEOVER: Let's put
'em back in the rack, Mac!

And then along came plastic.

When single use packaging
was presented to them,

they realised that they
could effectively externalise

all of those management
costs onto the municipalities.

VOICEOVER: You'll love them.

And that is why it looked like
such a good financial deal for them,

and that's why they went for it.

ADVERT: These lighter plastic bottles
take pounds off your shopping load. And...

By the 1970s, persuasive Coke adverts
were promoting the benefits of plastic.

Single use plastic is just a massive
money saver for all sorts of companies,

including Coca-Cola.

They use incredibly cheap
plastic to make that packaging.

They put it on the market
and then it's job done.

It's gone.

Coca-Cola owns hundreds of brands,

including Fanta, Sprite, and
55 brands of bottled water.

They use 3,500 plastic bottles per second.

That's more than 200,000 per minute.

Their drinks are sold in almost
every country in the world,

making The Coca-Cola Company
$20 billion profit every year.

Uganda is really blessed.

The biggest, the freshest water body in
Africa, the Lake Victoria, is in Uganda.

We have all this beauty.

It is heartbreaking to see
that a country like Uganda,

that we used to call "the pearl of
Africa", we are losing our rivers.

We are losing Lake Victoria.

Uganda is losing to plastic waste.

Just 6% of plastic waste is
collected for recycling here.

When I go to our
villages, I see the plastics.

I go to the lake, I see plastics.

I visit the rivers, I see plastics.

It really makes me feel like we
are losing our natural environment.

Plastic pollution is
affecting the marine life.

We have seen plastic killing fish.

More than three quarters
of everything Coca-Cola

sells in Uganda is in
throwaway plastic bottles.

As you can see, we are
finding Coca-Cola bottles.

This is also Fanta - a
product of Coca-Cola.

This is Coca-Cola once again.

Why should we see plastic everywhere?

Coca-Cola. The problem is not littering.

The problem is that there is more plastic
than the waste system can cope with.

Panorama's analysis of Coca-Cola's
own figures reveals that, globally,

since 2018, 156 billion of their
plastic bottles have been burnt,

littered, or buried in landfill sites.

Nearly four years ago, Coca-Cola
came up with a plan to tackle

their plastic pollution problem
and the growing backlash against it.

Launched with a slick
social media campaign,

they called it World Without Waste.

They pledged to make their packaging 100%
recyclable, use 50% recycled content and,

by 2030, collect and recycle one
bottle or can for every one they sell.

We'll design it to not just
be beautiful, but recyclable.

It'll come in, we'll
collect it, we'll chop it up,

we'll recycle it, and
we'll make more bottles.

When I was there, you know,
consumers hate excess packaging,

and the packaging they
hate the most is plastic.

Jake Backus spent 16 years at Coca-Cola.

He left two and a half years before
World Without Waste was launched.

Brands spent a lot of money understanding
their core target audience perceptions,

attitude to life, what's
important to them.

Coca-Cola's own research shows that
there is three times greater brand love

and trust if Coca-Cola was to do
something meaningful on the environment.

So the current chairman
and CEO, James Quincey,

changed the mission of the company.

So I do believe Coca-Cola is
moving in the right direction.

Nearly four years on, are they on track to
meet their World Without Waste promises?

Let's just break it down, Coca-Cola's
World Without Waste pledges.

So, the first one is on recyclability.

Coke's plastic bottles are made
from polyethylene terephthalate (PET),

one of the easiest plastics to recycle.

And Coke prints the word
"recycle" on nearly every one.

The truth is that Coke
packaging is recyclable.

Whether it's PET bottles, cans, cardboard,

all those packaging
items are highly recyclable,

so that pledge is effectively already met.

But buried in the small
print in Coke's own World.

Without Waste progress
report, there's an admission.

Coke says that their bottles are only
recyclable where infrastructure exists.

What happens in places where it doesn't?

When you're living on a
tropical island like Samoa,

it's very difficult not to
become a lover of nature.

I'm actually a Coke drinker and I've
always enjoyed Coke since I was young.

One of the reasons I
was happy to drink Coke is

that it was always
bottled in glass in Samoa.

People had an incentive to return
them because there was a deposit,

and so most glass was reused.

In February, Coke closed their glass
bottling line for fizzy drinks in Samoa,

and began shipping in
thousands of plastic bottles.

Then, within days, to see more plastic

littering of Coca-Cola
and Fanta and Sprite.

That was a shock, to be honest.

There is no recycling plant on Samoa.

Right now, Coke contributes to one third
of the plastic bottle waste here in Samoa.

Marina runs a charity
that collects recyclable

materials for export off the island.

The population here in
Samoa is only 200,000.

We don't generate enough
waste to have a recycling

facility for plastic
bottles here on the island.

That would only work for developed
countries and countries with more people.

Last year, Marina's charity received
a one-off $40,000 donation from Coke,

but she says it's not enough.

We really want to export
a container out of Samoa.

But the freight is very expensive.

So even if we do fill a container,

we still don't make profit because
we have to cover other costs,

such as employing of girls to
wash and process the plastic.

We have yet to export our first container.

We've never had any plastic leave Samoa.

Coke has since set up a scheme to
pay people $1 for each kilo of bottles,

that's around 50 they collect.

We asked Coca-Cola for an interview,

but they declined and gave
written answers to our questions.

On Samoa, they say,

"The decision to phase
out glass was difficult,

with many complexities
around the supply chain."

They are working to ensure none of
their products end up in the environment

and are launching an education
campaign to encourage recycling in Samoa.

What about Coca-Cola's Second
World Without Waste pledge to collect

and recycle one bottle or can
for every one they sell by 2030?

Are they on track to meet their target?

The second pledge, that one is going
to be much more challenging to achieve.

That literally means getting
100% collection for recycling,

and we know today
they're not even close to it.

It's not just Coke.

The entire soft drinks sector
has a plastic recycling problem.

Most of Coke's competitors like Pepsi,
and the bottled water producer Danone,

don't publish their
collection and recycling rates.

Coke do.

Their annual report shows
last year they sold 112 billion

throwaway plastic bottles, 14
for every person on the planet.

But only 56% made it to a recycling plant.

That means 49 billion
bottles weren't recycled.

The problem is that we
don't have sufficient collection,

and not only in the developing countries,
but also in America and in Asia.

We need to collect the bottles before
we can even think about recycling.

Rates of collecting PET bottles sold by
all brands differ hugely across the world.

Germany is leading
the way, collecting 98%,

followed closely by Finland,
Croatia and Denmark.

But these EU countries
have strict targets.

The UK plans to bring in the
same targets, but not until 2024.

It collects just 57%, and many
poorer countries have far worse rates.

We cannot recycle our way
out of the problem, full stop,

because we are not going to
recycle 100% of the material.

Unless you have a decent collection
and management system in place,

you can make it as recyclable as you want,

but it's still going to end
up in the environment.

The Philippines is Coca-Cola's
oldest established market in Asia.

Here, nearly half of all soft drinks and
bottled water sold are made by Coke.

Coca-Cola is very
popular in the Philippines.

It's a Coca-Cola nation.

In this dump site, the majority
of the waste that are here,

and you can see, are plastic waste.

The Philippines is
clearly struggling with the

plastic pollution created
by the single use plastic.

According to Coca-Cola,
just one in five PET bottles

sold here in 2019 were
collected for recycling.

We recognise it's unacceptable that our
packaging ends up in oceans and landfills,

in places where they shouldn't.

Half of what Coke sells here
is in refillable glass bottles,

where their plastic bottles
have been getting smaller.

The latest edition is just 200ml.

Look at this - all these small bottles.

This is the craziest
creation of Coca-Cola.

So this kind of product that
we Filipinos has been regularly

bombarded with advertisements
saying that "the coolest drink ever".

Coca-Cola is using
plastic bottles that they

claim as recyclable but
are not being recycled.

Because there is no system
of collecting it properly.

We don't have enough
manpower to collect all the waste.

Collecting bottles isn't just a
challenge in the Philippines.

It's a crisis for many of
the world's poorer nations.

Coca-Cola says they will
collect one bottle for each

bottle they sell in Uganda,
but they can never do that.

They can never achieve it.

In Uganda's capital, Kampala,

the local authorities collect
only half the city's rubbish.

There's a lot of
plastic waste in the city.

So in areas where people do not
have a system to collect this garbage,

people resort to burning.

Plastic has pollutants
which are directly toxic.

Dr Kirenga says he is seeing more and more

people in his clinic with
respiratory problems.

And his research suggests that one factor

is the open burning
of all types of plastic.

Air pollution can cause damage
to almost any tissue in the body,

but most of the tissues that are
affected, the lungs and the brain.

The rates of lung cancer are
also rapidly increasing in Uganda.

In a population where people
do not smoke that much,

air pollution could be responsible.

When rubbish is collected, it
ends up on open dumps like this.

Plastic bottles here are mixed with
rotting food and disposable nappies.

But there is a market for the bottles,

and every day hundreds of
informal waste pickers come

to collect them to sell on
to recycling middlemen.

There is no-one in the world who
wishes to work on the dumping site.

People come here
because they have no choice.

You work ten hours and you earn, like, $1.

These people collect plastics.

Most of them are single mothers,
and they come with their children.

They are always here, seven days a week.

I don't think Coca-Cola have the
capacity to collect by themselves.

They need these people.

Child labour robs kids of their
childhood and of their education.

But the reality is that if
waste pickers were fairly paid,

if they could afford childcare,
if they could afford schooling,

they wouldn't bring their kids to work.

Big plastic creators like Coca-Cola owe
those informal waste pickers a great deal.

Waste pickers are
collecting their plastic.

They're preventing it
being burnt and dumped.

In return, the companies
need to ensure waste pickers

can earn enough to
provide for their families.

Coke have their own
recycling plant in Kampala.

It can process 250
million bottles each year.

But Coke told us that
for the past three years,

it has not run at capacity because
they couldn't collect enough bottles.

The questions for
Coca-Cola on collection are,

will they stump up the investment
to make collection systems work,

and how are they going to treat the
waste pickers collecting that plastic?

Coca-Cola say they're
working to help waste pickers,

who are often some of
the most vulnerable people,

and have developed tools to help
understand their economic conditions.

They say their goal to
collect and recycle a bottle

for every one they sell
by 2030 is ambitious.

Coke's third and final
pledge is to include 50%

recycled plastic in their
bottles as a global average.

That means using
much less so-called virgin

plastic made directly from fossil fuels.

Let's look at the third commitment.

The 50% recycled content
target is going to be difficult.

They have to find the material.

Coca-Cola have made promises
on recycled content before.

Since 1990, there have been lots of
Coca-Cola pledges for recycled content,

and they have failed on all counts.

In 1991, Coke introduced bottles
made from 25% recycled plastic.

Just three years later,
they phased them out.

Then Coke promised
that every bottle on sale

in America would contain
10% recycled plastic.

By 2005, they achieved just 4%.

A few years later, a new pledge,

all bottles would have 25%
recycled plastic by 2015.

They reached just 7%.

They've failed because
they can't get the material,

because we're not
collecting enough bottles.

Since World Without Waste was
launched, Coca-Cola have increased the

amount of recycled plastic in their
bottles from 8.6% to just 11.5%.

If they carry on at this rate,

Coke will reach only 32% by 2030,
instead of the 50% they promised.

So why is Coke's progress
in increasing the amount

of recycled plastic in
their bottles been slow?

These are bales of plastic called PET, the
plastic that we use to make drink bottles.

This is a plastic coke bottle, but
obviously this is in no state to be used,

so the next stage, it gets cleaned up,

sterilised and turned back
into food grade material,

and I have here the kind of
material that we end up with.

So this is flake, then
that gets melted down,

turned into pellets and
turned into new bottles.

So it starts off as a drink
bottle, ends up as a drink bottle.

Waste management
companies, like this one in Kent,

produce recycled plastic and sell it
to brands to use in their packaging.

At the minute, we're in a situation where

demand for recycled
material is really rising.

A lot of companies make
commitments about how

they're going to increase
the recycled content.

That's great, exactly what needs
to happen, but it increases demand.

The issue is recovery
and recycling of plastic

costs more money
than buying virgin plastic.

There's not enough food grade
quality plastics coming back.

You need it to be good quality and clean.

Recycled plastic that can
be used for food and drink

packaging is now a
sought-after global commodity.

In 2020, it was double
the price of virgin plastic.

Like all soft drinks
and plastic producers,

Coke are competing to secure a supply.

So for now, nearly 90% of the plastic
in Coke's bottles is virgin plastic,

and that has an impact
on their carbon emissions.

Studies show recycled plastic
produces 80% less carbon dioxide.

The plastic issue and climate
change, they're intimately linked.

When we're making virgin
plastic, we're using fossil fuels.

Currently, Coke's total
plastics production emits

six million tonnes of
carbon dioxide a year.

That's the same emissions as the
energy use of more than 700,000 homes.

If they meet their pledge
on recycled content,

that would reduce emissions by a third.

Coca-Cola say PET plastic
does have environmental benefits,

it's energy-efficient to produce and
transport, compared to other materials.

They say they are confident they can
reach their 50% recycled plastic goal,

but they must improve collection rates.

But there is another way
for Coca-Cola to go green.

In Brazil, Coke is promoting a
different type of plastic bottle.

It's thicker, sturdier, and
as the ads clearly show,

it's designed to be reused
over and over again,

just like the old style glass bottles.

In Brazil, they're investing in refill,

and some other countries,
like in South Africa,

which I think is a direct reaction to the
public outcry about single-use plastics.

Coke say their refillable plastic
bottles can be reused up to 25 times.

And in Brazil, they're replacing 200
million throwaway ones every year.

But globally, Coke sold 112
billion throwaway bottles last year,

and just four billion
refillable plastic ones.

So why aren't they being used more widely?

Reusable bottles
require a lot of investment.

They have to collect those bottles.

They have to wash them
and put them on the market.

Unfortunately, they're not
making that a universal system.

They're still completely betting on
single-use plastics and recycling.

Nearly four years after making
their World Without Waste promises,

our investigation has revealed
that Coca-Cola are struggling

to make the headway
required to meet their targets,

and evidence on the ground
suggests that more plastic coke

packaging is being found
littered than any other brands.

We have thousands and
thousands of volunteers from

more than 50 countries
go out, do brand audits,

then we compile all
that data to understand

who are the global top polluters.

In 2021, Coca-Cola came out
on top for the fourth year in a row.

Coca-Cola is an absolute
master of greenwashing.

Greenwashing is
pretending that something is

green when actually it
is anything but green.

During the course of this programme,

around six million Coca-Cola
bottles have been produced.

More than 2.5 million won't be recycled.

Coca-Cola said they have been
clear that the challenges are great,

and that through World Without Waste
they are hoping to shift the mind-set

from being the face of the problem
to being the leader in finding solutions.

They say they're making good
progress, but have a long way to go.

If Coca-Cola do achieve their goals,
they will set a standard for the industry.

Coca-Cola categorically
can make a difference.

They have the scale, they
have the brand expertise,

they have the capability
to really drive change.

But critics think even meeting
their pledges would not be enough.

Recycling is a good thing, but
that's only part of the solution.

The solution would be to turn the tap off.

We really need to see governments step in.

We need to see clear binding targets
that force companies to reduce plastic.

I will speak for the entire
Global South countries.

We are left out in all the strategies of

sustainability for
companies like Coca-Cola.

Their World Without Waste, it is
only maybe applicable in Europe.

Yet right now, we are
the ones suffering more

from the problems
caused by plastic pollution.