How Coca-Cola Undermines Plastic Recycling Efforts
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
Since their products are nearly all unhealthy and all pollute, "reduce" suggests we all benefit from no one buying their products at all. If they thought about how environmental concerns will affect them, they'd promote recycling wholeheartedly, not half.
They use philanthropy to look noble in the effort of creating a greener planet through recycling. And note that this effort is voluntary, from the kindness of their heart. While, they are the ones creating the problem in the first place. They'll fight any law that will stop them from creating the problem and benefiting from it.
Compare that to Nordics, where Norway achieved 95.4% return rate of PET bottles (~0.3 USD return cash-back), and Sweden 84% (~0.15 USD return) [1]. Most countries in EU have landfill ban [2], so most of waste is either burned or recycled. Diverting bottles/cans to return scheme solves garbage sorting problem, which makes it possible to process/recycle 100% of it just by improving recycling facilities.
In my personal opinion, closed loop systems (full ban on landfills) are better for everyone, but require deep systematic changes, potentially using "dirty" psychological tricks, to get done what's really needed. Adding deposits may sound negative from NIMBY/corporate, but it leverages human psychological on last mile (where garbage sorting is easiest) and from empirical evidence achieves what needs to be done.
- [0] https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-... - [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation - [2] http://www.cewep.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Landfill-taxe...
Just slapping recycle costs on all three forms of drink containers should be sufficient to boost return to proper places. I remember bottle deposits doing well.
Keep America Beautiful was formed in reaction to proposed 1953 Vermont legislation to require deposits on bottles. American Can Company, Pepsi, Coke, Budweiser, Philip Morris and others figured out, funded and launched the group. Neatly framing their new externality as solely a fault with their customers.
Interestingly Coke and others are complaining in the UK that rules to require 30% recycled plastic are too onerous, and have caused the cost of recycled plastic to rise.
My other question is, when do we start seeing these corporations as unaccountable extra-legal entities who are in a very real sense an enemy of future generations of humans and their prosperity? If we do come to that conclusion, what is the appropriate physical response? Do we begin to protest their plants as aggressively as US citizens protest ICE administration and/or incarceration facilities?
In the future, yes.
I've only ever lived in states that have had bottle deposits. I've been feeding these cans/bottles back into the redemption machines since I was a kid. I can genuinely stay that I've recycled nearly every eligible container I've ever used.
However for most of my adult live I've also had recycling available at curbside - including cans/bottles. It was originally paper, glass and metal separated, but has since gone single stream.
We recycle everything we can that is eligible, but I don't put cans/bottles in there because I'd lose the deposit. I wish the deposit was gone so that I could put these items in there and gain this little efficiency in life.
At the same time I see these studies where the data clearly shows the deposit has a significantly higher effective recycling rate. I'm struggling to understand this. Do the places without deposits also not have curbside single stream recycling that processes these containers?
Can someone with experience in a location with no deposit but with curbside single stream recycling available for these items explain why people aren't recycling them there?
Is really as simple as "people won't put things into a different trash receptacle in their home"?
As an example, at work, I could put a drink bottle in my waste bin at my desk (which normally holds just clean paper) knowing that the cleaners will grab it and recycle it.
Additionally - yes, there are many people who fundamentally refuse to separate their trash, but will do so for a nickel per bottle.
It would be better to directly employ those people at sorting facilities, but that can be difficult for a number of reasons.
Not least of which is that they'd almost certainly need to be paid far, far more than they're making when they do it on their own.
Not that I disagree, though: overall the idea/point you made is a good one.
There are other complications though. The willingness of the public to employ such people, and the willingness of such people to be employed.
Meanwhile, there's not, so while the street looks like a war zone on recycling day (because people rip open bags to get cans while the bottles and everything else blows away), it's a symptom of a much deeper problem that nobody really wants to address. The income from collecting cans is all some people have to live on.
My understanding is that the city's latest plan is to arrest people for stealing their valuable cans; curbside recycling is a revenue generator! You know you don't have enough crime when this is what we're paying our detectives to investigate.
https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/recycling/blogs/deposit-shelf-...
FWIW have you done the math on the actual money you get back, divided by the time spent managing an extra waste stream? Unless you're a heavy bottle user, I personally don't see how it makes sense to not just ignore the deposit and recycle via modern means.
They're not necessarily vestigial. NY's been considering expanding bottle deposits to juice, energy drinks, coffee and tea sold in plastic or glass bottles (currently, it's mainly soda and water).
There's a psychological effect. For example, the grocery store charges 5 cents per bag. If I forget to bring bags with me to the store, it irks me that I have to pay 5 cents, even though the amount is trivial and completely non-substantive.
We rinse the bottles/cans whenever we are doing other dishes. We throw them into a bin that holds all deposit eligible containers. When the bin fills we take it with us on our next trip to the grocery store and recycle them.
It probably takes me about 5 minutes to feed them all in and it recovers about 3 dollars.
These days I get it in change and then give it to my daughter for her piggy bank. She's very young, but we're trying to introduce the concepts of saving early.
The general plastic recycling is considered too contaminated to be used for food.
Knowing this, I give my bottles to the people who collect the deposits. (I don't wish to do it myself.)
Guess who "co-ordinates" the bottle return scheme in New South Wales (where the linked article references)? It's a joint venture of which Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA - the Australian distributor), is a key stakeholder.
So they basically control what is an acceptable bottle, what the price you must pay for that is, etc. and charge for producer certification, etc. It's put the squeeze on a lot of smaller craft beer and beverage producers, as the costs to implement have been pushed on to them.
Oh and in Australia it's illegal for the brewers to re-use glass bottles, irrespective of their prior use or treatment :-(
When I was a kid in late 70s early 80s my family of four shared one 750ml bottle of pop (and one bag of chips) on Friday night. Now a 600ml is a single serving of pop and many people drink pop with every meal.
They’re not chosen though, they are the result of billions of dollars spent on advertising.
I have drunk a couple cans since, but didn't particularly care for the sticky, syrupy taste, and did not resume the habit.
Tap-water is kept in nice dark pipes.
It doesn't normally stay there long enough to get stagnant.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/15/micropla...
Usually that leaves it pure enough to not require chlorine for ongoing disinfection.
Warren Buffet likes to pretend he is great but we should clearly associate his personal fortune with the plastic pollution that Coca Cola produces in mass.
If drinking litres of cola causes diseases that the public purse has to support, then pay more for the cola.
And even if it could be implemented, it's still not the point of universal healthcare. In most European countries we'd rather take care of everyone, even those who are guilty of their own health problems.
For example, and even from an egoistic point of view and leaving ethics aside, I'd rather have drug addicts treated and sheltered with my tax money than having to encounter dozens of them, homeless and stinking from bad hygiene, every time I walk the street, as I have seen in many US cities.
It’s not the job of a doctor to pass moral judgement on you. They can recommend healthier habits, but doctors deciding whom to treat and whom not to treat based on some arbitrary moral judgement is really scary territory. It’s punitive and more importantly, it doesn’t work. Punishing people for their self-induced health problems doesn’t make them better, and it opens the door to some really scary discrimination.
Should a chain smoker and someone with no elective risk factors have equal eligibility for a lung transplant? They're otherwise comparable patients. One's going to die, and there's only one lung to go around.
We seem to survive as a society by using systems like that for insurance that isn't health insurance. If your house burns down it matters if it was because of foreseeable and reckless behavior on your part.
It’s obvious whether or not you’ve had a house fire, and it’s sometimes possible to divine who was at fault. But healthcare isn’t binary like that. Organ transplants are a special case too, and the ethics there are tricky because of limited resources. It also depends he wilt on compatibility. It doesn’t really matter if a smoker gets new lungs and a non-smoker doesn’t if the smoker is compatible with available lungs and the non-smoker isn’t.
For any tax or public policy you can find sob stories on the edges, it doesn't mean it's not a good idea in the aggregate to enact the policy.
Which is what I'm pointing out in this case, it's generally a good idea to tax the specific harm that's being addressed (unhealthyness), not some mostly-but-not-quite related variable (sugar consumption).
That organ transplant example isn't meant to be plausible, but an apocryphal story. You presented a story of "no treatment for you" for someone being grossly negligent with their own body.
I'm pointing out that you'll equivalently have otherwise healthy people who don't get timely treatment because the health care system overall is strained by obesity-related illnesses, tobacco-related cancers etc.
Doing nothing is equivalent to continuing to punish people for their health problems because some other people have preventable self-induced health problems. So I don't think you can make the slippery-slope argument, or claim the moral high ground.
Even in countries without, the public still end up paying the price in the end. Even if they don't see it manifest in their taxes, the social cost of cola manifests in other ways such as living in an environment where obesity is commonplace (aesthetic impact), having obese friends and family (particularly medical expenses in the family.) When obesity is commonplace, fit labor is in short supply which drives up the cost of everything. Public transit holds fewer people when massively obese cola drinkers are filling up more than one seat. Fewer people walk or cycle around town, opting instead to drive which results in worse traffic and worse air quality. The perceived importance of outdoor facilities like parks, hiking trails, etc all take a hit. All in all, obesity is bad for the economy, bad for the environment, and bad for the aesthetic qualities of society.
When the majority are physically fit, everybody benefits (even those who aren't fit.) When the majority are unfit, everybody is harmed (even those who are fit.)
I'm not saying it's a dumb tax because a triathlete on a model diet who likes to have a can of coke once a month is going to break the bank.
It's a dumb tax because as an instrument of public policy it doesn't begin to do enough to tax preventable diet-caused illnesses. If that's the desired effect we should just operate it like auto-insurance.
A health exam will decide your tax rate, have privacy concerns? Don't do the exam and be in the highest bracket. The same is true for your auto insurance and your accident rate.
It's doubly dumb because it's also enacted due to concerns over pollution, that's a worthwhile thing to fix, but taxing sugar doesn't help. The pollution needs to be taxed, then whoever's selling polluting drink containers (whether they have sugar in them or not) has an incentive to not pollute.
It's also a regressive tax. Someone who's rich pays more towards public health care, and that's generally considered a good idea, but then we're going to say that their efforts to intentionally destroy their health (forcing more expenditures) should be unrelated to income?
But the sugar is also hiding the phosphoric acid, which also has negative health impacts, along with amplifying liver damage.
What you are basically arguing is that government should either penalize poor people for making health choices they don't like, or limit the ability of poor people to make those choices by making it too expensive for them.
This does not into a functional society.
It worked very well cutting smoking in the UK, in tandem with advertising and shop display restrictions.
https://www.govtech.com/fs/automation/San-Francisco-Rolls-Ou...
> As of December, San Francisco has transitioned its SFpark pilot into a citywide program to set rates on all 28,000 parking spaces on public streets and 14 city-operated garages. The plan prices parking based on demand — not unlike the approach used by airlines to set fares or ride-hailing apps to set the price of a trip.
> “Demand-responsive pricing,” as the concept is known, means “prices could fluctuate block by block, time-band by time-band, and then weekday versus weekend,” said Hank Wilson, parking policy manager for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA).
> The new approach to setting parking rates in San Francisco based on demand is not intended as an effort to raise parking revenue, officials stress. In fact, the new system will likely be revenue neutral because rates on many streets and in garages will likely drop.
I remember being in some East Coast state, I think it was Maine, where I could return beverage containers at same store where I bought the drinks. That's convenient. Going to a recycling facility to get 5 cents back per container is not. My fuel cost would be higher than the value of returned deposit.
I recycled cans a few times. It's convoluted. The rate per can is in practice disregarded and it would actually be lower at about $1.43/lb than the $1.63/lb that could be paid out today by weight. The centers pay a rate per pound. However, they can pay either the CRV rate per pound or the scrap metal rate. Most infrequent recyclers would have no idea these are options.
"How much do recycling centers pay per pound for cans and bottles? Currently, state certified recycling centers pay a minimum of $1.63 CRV for aluminum cans; $1.26 CRV for clear PET plastic bottles; $0.60 CRV for HDPE plastic bottles (similar to the large water jugs); and $0.10 CRV for glass bottles. These CRV per pound rates are periodically adjusted, with new rates taking effect January 1 and July 1. In addition to the CRV, recyclers may also pay a scrap value, which may also fluctuate.
Can recycling centers pay less than the refund value for redeemed containers? Yes, if the material is contaminated. Operators of certified recycling centers must inspect each load of containers to determine whether it is eligible for CRV. Recycling centers have the option to refuse to accept containers which, in their opinion, are excessively contaminated with dirt, moisture, or other foreign substances. Alternatively, recycling centers may adjust downward the CRV per pound used to calculate the payment by the ratio of such substances to empty beverage containers. In this circumstance, the consumer has the right to accept the discounted refund and/or scrap price, to separate refund from nonrefund material, or to take the material back."
1) their hourglass bottles use more plastic per 2L bottle than other 2L bottles
2) They reduced their 591mL bottles to 500. Ugh.
if only I could figure out a scalable way to punch people in the face, give them the herp, and charge for it? instant billionaire!
Seriously, "pop" et. al. is "Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy" level farce.
There are places where it's easier to get Coke than potable water.
"If sugar had been discovered recently instead of in antiquity it would be a controlled substance instead of being half our kids' meals."
2. It can break more easily. If it breaks, you can cut yourself on it. You can also cut others which is why those bottles are prohibited at some places with security controls or some workplaces.
I could have made that clearer in my sentence, sorry.
same rule would apply to their competitors.
>a bottle bill or container deposit law, which requires beverage companies to tack a charge onto the price of their drink to be refunded after it’s returned
So, yeah, it'd make their product more expensive at the time of purchase.
But "soda companies oppose recycling" is more sensational than "soda companies oppose adding a fee to the cost of their products".
So the question becomes why do they oppose a fee that is unlikely to hurt overall sales? Ah, because they would have to do something with those returned bottles...
No they don't. Here in Norway the bottles are compacted in the back of the reverse vending machine (usually from Tomra: https://www.tomra.com/nb-no/collection/reverse-vending) and sent directly to recycling. Bottles from all the different suppliers go together, none of them go back to the manufacturer of the content. And Coca-Cola has a deposit on bottles here and it is an entirely non-controversial idea.
Moving to the system presently in Norway, and Germany I believe would be a huge step in the right direction. Sadly most governments appear afraid or unable to actually put accountability on corporations. Personally I'd require them to go back to deposit and reuse.
These are the biggest beer brands (Carlsberg etc) and the biggest soda brands (Coke etc), though the glass soda bottles are mostly seen in bars.
Do you have any evidence for this?
It seems like any fee, even a small one, is going to impact sales when an item is priced as low as soda is. That's not to say their stance is justified or morally right. But framing it as primarily driven by opposition to recycling (which is a source of cheaper raw materials for them), as opposed to blanket opposition to any kind of fee being added to the price of their products, strikes me as misleading.
The thing is, it does make the product more expensive. A ten cent deposit on a dollar product means a customer has pull $1.10 out of their pocket or CC balance. Customers don't think logically, and even if they do, they have to assign some monetary value to having to bring the bottle back, the chance that it may be discarded, etc.
It does hurt sales. If it didn't, the Coke would already be $1.10. (My exact numbers are fictitious, obviously, but the point is that Coke has already set their price at the number that maximizes profit.)
I'm not opposed to bottle deposits. They're highly effective. I just think it's disingenuous to act as if Coke here is opposed to recycling in general. They're not. They're opposed to the reduced sales that will come from higher prices.
That difference gives recycling advocates options. They can agree to spend some money on educating consumers, or making bottle returns easier, or anything else that might help ease the effect Coke is trying to avoid. They can probably find some common ground. There's no possible reason for Coke to be opposed to recycling in general.
"I didn't stop you from eating cake; I just wanted to eat it all myself"
"I don't support oppression in the East; I just want to have the products they sell"
No-one ever has a goal to do something bad. It is just a by-product of not giving a flying ^^
--
Yes, avoid biased views; but lets not also avoid escaping responsibility, even if by coincidence
If you are somebody who wants recycling that is a very useful distinction because it gives you a place to find common ground. There is room for recycling advocates and Coca-Cola to work together, whereas if Coca-Cola were just opposed to recycling there would not be.
But at some level I think only considering personal gain is negative
Otherwise we would say tobacco companies weren't negative to surpress evidence of cancer... Just because they want to sell cigarettes
Are coca-cola undermining the common ground? If they openly try to resolve these issues, I don't think anyone would call it negative
-- I want coca-cola to be their own main advocates for improvement
Even if you assume you'll return 100% of them, which you won't, you have to value the time spent doing so.
And when you don't return 100%, which will be the case for most people, you eat a fee.
Coca-Cola pushing back on a bill that would increase their overhead, increase the cost of their product, and decrease sales is disingenuous and intellectually dishonest to label as "Undermining Plastic Recycling Efforts". Especially when they do things to push for the recycling efforts in other ways.
That's not to say bottle deposits wouldn't be a great system, regardless of how it hurts Coca-Cola's bottle line - I just can't abide by such egregious dishonesty. I've taken to referring to such over generalization of titles "the news cycle Simpson's Paradox." Its masking material details by over generalizing or over abstracting them away.
> Especially when they do so much to push for the recycling efforts in other ways.
Comparatively ineffective ways.
The fact that a company like Coca Cola can choke policy by making it rain money so that effective policy that hurts their profits cannot be implemented is the crux of the article. How is this title dishonest?
Framing it in the light of "They are blocking [all] recycling efforts" is dishonest.
In the sense of I read the title, thought, why the fuck is coca-cola blocking recycling efforts, why don't they like recycling? clicked, read, and was disappointed because I felt mislead and click bated to read an article i wouldn't have bothered to read if it was titled more honestly like, "[How] Coca-Cola uses it's charitable efforts in recycling nonprofits to block bottle deposit bills"
So, to answer your question, it's dishonest and misleading because its an over-generalized and over-abstracted summary of the subject matter that gains clicks that a more on point title would not gain.
But that's not the title. That's a much stronger statement than the article. If you choose such creative ways to interpret people's words then you can make anyone sound dishonest or stupid.
This is similar to how some people think it's clever to answer "yes" when asked an "X or Y" question where both X and Y are true. Technically, it's a correct answer, but it is not a response designed to engender a correct understanding of the situation in the listener's mind. I think the title would be just as punchy and less likely to mislead if it were "How Coca-Cola Undermines Bottle Deposit Efforts".
Though there has got to be a better way to incentivize recycling than using human effort to play with singular pieces of trash. Especially one that doesn't end up preying on vulnerable people who don't need the pennies but still ending up hoarding empty cans in their house/car/etc.
Furthermore I'd go much farther myself. A lower deposit on items that can be easily recyclable. A much higher deposit on plastic items that are hard to recycle in order to push the manufacturer's to make recyclable packaging.
10x the deposit would certainly change my personal utilitarian calculation. Which IMHO is a common pattern of failure in the US - only small amounts at stake, a system that sucks because most people just ignore it, and then opposition to making that sucky system more prominent (as my comment was arguing). My viewpoint with respect to cans is probably how large companies perceive dumping waste in a river - the fine is only a $300k line item several years down the road, not worth worrying about!
The sustainability problem that we're facing is much more general, rather than focusing on bespoke solutions for individual categories. A "deposit" is basically just an attempt to price resource depletion into the consumption side, rather than the supply side. IMO it makes sense to move the accounting to the supply side instead of attempting to assign a specific negative cost to every category of good that we don't want incinerated. Tax virgin materials to properly price in the externality of resource depletion, as opposed to increasing deposits to putative levels. If using recycled materials is incentivized enough, it will even start to make sense to pull stuff like aluminum out of the garbage stream.
(PS I've got to wonder whether USians downvoting me even actually return their own bottles for the deposit, or consider it someone else's problem and enjoy having an underclass to salvage recyclables from the unenlightened. I can't imagine many people with tech level salaries care about the nickels.)
I have a habit to take enough bags to the supermarket when shopping, yet I can easily afford the few pennies a new plastic bag costs. My parents had the habit to take items with a deposit - mostly drinks bottles. They didn't need the few coins either.
Considering an old glass pop or milk bottle went round the system 50 or more times, once strikes me as unsustainable madness. As the manufacturer carries none of the consequences, they have incentives to ensure we don't improve. No wonder they consistently lobby against deposit and reuse or recycling schemes.
Well, it seems to me like they're using the natural tendency of organizations to self-preserve as a lever. By giving these orgs just enough funding to be visible and retain a staff, they can garrote meaningful changes to resource management policies that hurt their bottom line.
We're not interested in ineffective measures for plastic management. If they're pushing for ineffective measures while threatening to freeze out anyone with serious conversations about effective ones, then they're not pushing for "recycling efforts in other ways." They're manipulating the system to keep it ineffective.
I'm not sure this title is disingenuous at all.