Coca-Cola significantly scales back its sustainability goals

The news: Coca-Cola slashed its packaging sustainability goals.

• The company, which accounts for about 11% of branded plastic pollution in the world, said it will use 35% to 40% recycled material in its packaging by 2035. It previously planned to reach 50% by 2030.
• And it scaled back its 2018 pledge to recycle the plastic equivalent of every bottle it produces by 2030. Now, it plans to “ensure the collection” of just 70% to 75% of bottles and cans entering the market.

Coca-Cola has also failed to deliver on two other goals: reducing its virgin plastic use by a cumulative 3 million metric tons from 2020 to 2025” and selling a quarter of its beverages in refillable or returnable packaging by 2030, per the Washington Post. Coca-Cola didn’t reduce its use of virgin plastic between 2020 and 2023, and it sold just 14% of its products in reusable packaging last year.

Shifting political winds: While many companies spent much of the past decade touting their environmental and social bona fides, the political winds have dramatically shifted.

• Coca-Cola rolled out its scaled-back ambitions just days after global talks about reducing plastic pollution broke down and a little less than a month after Donald Trump—who has called climate change a hoax—won the US presidential election.
• Coca-Cola’s steps dovetails with Walmart, Lowe’s, and other retailers retreating from their DEI initiatives as conservative activists and shareholders put corporate diversity programs under the spotlight.

Our take: Coca-Cola is making a bet that any criticism it faces from its more modest goals will quickly fade. That may prove true unless environmentalists take a page from conservatives and push the company to shift gears.

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