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I hate how much this is made into 'rich' versus 'poor' countries. It distractes from the main culprits: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-

I hate how much this is made into 'rich' versus 'poor' countries. It distractes from the main culprits: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-Heinz ... etc. Coca-Cola sells 1.3 billion liters of coke in 'poor' Mexico alone, most of which will be in plastic packaging. Coca-cola alone is creating 110 billion PET bottles _per_year_. At the end of the day it is companies packaging products that have externalized the environmental costs of the _cheaper_ (for them) plastic packaging onto local governments and consumers. Why are we not discussing that? Why is there no regulation to force non-plastic packaging when a viable alternative packing exists? Why are these companies lobbying against plastic taxation? Why are these companies lobbying against single-use plastic bans? Sadly straws and q-tips ban is the most embarassing display of a collective of weak governments in the hands of corporate lobbying.

gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
There is a bit of a balancing act going on. If bottles moved to glass, that would increase weight and CO2. If they moved to more cans, that’s still plastic due to the liners.
- joekrill 4y ago
  You might have a point with glass - but the can argument is a bit of a straw man. Even coated aluminum cans are significantly better than plastic bottles. They are very easily recycled.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  This is not about GHG emissions, this is about disposing of non-degradable plastic. But to follow your reasoning, do you have any data on the CO2 emissions of extracting, transporting and transforming crude oil into PET bottles, versus some 30% added weight to a delivery truck?
  - randunel 4y ago
    I'm not sure lorries would get 30% heavier, they're already trying to maximise every load. You would, instead, get x% more traffic.
    - carlmr 4y ago
      Are they maximizing the load by space or weight? Or do they actively try to get an optimized mix of both? I would imagine glass bottles also take more space though, so still I guess there might be more traffic.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        At least the local delivery trucks are often quite empty - easier to have a big truck and not need it than a small one that runs out of room.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The vast majority of trucks don’t load full. Especially the local delivery trucks. And even those loaded by volume could probably go to glass without hitting weight limits. And if the result is more local bottling plants, that’s even better.
- mrpopo 4y ago
  If bottles moved to glass, many companies will quickly switch to returnable bottles, which will increase incentives to use standard bottle sizes, which in turn may reduce the distance that bottles travel, etc. It's also likely that prices will increase and therefore consumption will decrease (contributing to solving the obesity crisis in the process). You can't predict things in a vacuum. Also, how much would that increase CO2 emissions in the worst case? Plastic pollution and climate change are separate problems. If we are solving plastic pollution effectively, wouldn't it be worth a hypothetical .5% increase in global CO2 ?
  - carlmr 4y ago
    We already have somewhat standardized glass bottles for easier local returns in Germany. I think it's a good system to avoid plastic trash.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Beer is almost universally glass in the US and we don’t reuse. I’d like to see standard glass bottles that are universally reusable and washable, but there are claims it’s more energy to wash than to make new (which I suspect is funny accounting).
    - tristan957 4y ago
      No brewery that I go to uses bottles for distribution. If you are talking about major beer brands, I would like to see some stats.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        https://www.beerinstitute.org/trends-beer-packaging/ https://www.beerinstitute.org/trends-beer-packaging/ > Glass bottles compose nearly one-third of all beer volume in the United States and nearly two-thirds of above premium segment volume. I think the "premium" is what I'm noticing; I kind of ignore all the large packs of aluminum beer cans (though to be honest that's the only beer I have on hand right now). What I have very rarely seen is plastic beer - only at stadiums where they don't want you throwing the bottle at the players, basically. Of course, the only proper beer container is a giant keg.
- stdbrouw 4y ago
  Nitpick: aluminium cans do not have a liner on the inside (unlike the laminates used for e.g. potato chips) and big brands usually print their branding straight onto the aluminium, it's only smaller brands that use plastic shrink sleeve labels.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>the main culprits: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-Heinz ... etc. And what do these giant multinational companies have in common? /s The issue is there is no unified multinational push to regulate these multinational giants. You can't have local solutions to global problems, and these companies are as global as they get, constantly chasing the places with the lowest taxes, lowest wages, least amount of regulations, most corruption, and easiest to bribe officials for access to exploiting local resources, etc. while making record profits quarter after quarter at the expense of the environment and people in less afluent places. We need global regulations for them. But that will never happen because China, the US and EU won't touch their giants as long as they're not doing anything illegal back home.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  > We need global regulations for them. But that will never happen. That is a pessimist outlook, all you need is for the EU bloc and the US to implement such measures and plastic pollution in the world would fall an order of magnitude. The problem is not lack of _global_ regulations, just spineless politicians.
  - Huh1337 4y ago
    What kind of regulation of these corporations do you envision? It's not them making the waste - it's the people-consumers who are not throwing the bottles away for recycling, or their countries not recycling locally and instead just throwing away the waste somewhere else. What about that is changed by regulating Coca Cola?
    - super256 4y ago
      I think the best way is to follow the German solution: When you buy a bottle/can, you place a collateral there for each bottle, like 50 cent per bottle. You only get the deposit back when you return the bottles to some supermarket. I really like this model, and it works over here. Of course, you still need a working recycling chain, but at least it incentives individual people to properly bring their rubbish to the recycling places.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
A system that is proven to work is a container deposit; in my country they recently made it so that the .5 liter bottles of e.g. coca cola have a 25 cent deposit, which you get back if you deposit it in the right channels. It's not perfect, but it prevents a lot of these ending up in the regular waste stream. In theory these bottles can then be washed and reused, or ground up and reused or recycled. I don't know if that actually happens though.
- tomp 4y ago
  Your country’s government scammed citizens out of 25 cents for each bottle they buy, and brainwashed them (you?) that plastic can be recycled. Hint: plastic cannot be recycled. Burning it is carbon positive. Burying it underground is closer to carbon neutral. We should bury plastic bottles.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    Not all plastics are the same. Aren't the majority of plastic drink bottles made from PET, which has high recyclability? I agree that many plastic waste products should be burried.
  - Ancalagon 4y ago
    Not sure why you're being downvoted. This is the truth and honestly the best course of action at this point.
Aunche 4y ago
>I hate how much this is made into 'rich' versus 'poor' countries. It distracts from the main culprits: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-Heinz ... etc Let's not scapegoat a group that I'm a part of, and instead scapegoat a group I'm not a part of! >Sadly straws and q-tips ban is the most embarassing display of a collective of weak governments in the hands of corporate lobbying. "Lobbying" is a convenient bogeyman, but in this case, lobbyists are merely revealing the very real preference that Americans love using single use plastics. The internet thinks that lobbying is the corporations bribing politicians, but in reality, lobbying is corporations convincing politicians what is the best way to bribe their voters. Ocean plastics from consumer goods is already a solved problem anyways. Developing countries need better trash infrastructure. Even, landfills and incinerators are better than dumping it in the ocean.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  > lobbyists are merely revealing the very real preference that Americans love using single use plastics. Citation needed? So are you saying that it is the consumer that drives demand for single-use plastic? The massive cost reduction for the manufacturer has absolutely nothing to do with this push?
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Who else but the consumer is asking for rock bottom pricing? Even if not verbally, people vote with their feet and wallets. We need to restore the relationship between disposal and cost, by charging manufacturers a cost to recycle or trash. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2022-2-summer/notes-here-there/shifting-costs-recycling-manufacturers-not-consumers?amp https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2022-2-summer/notes-here-t...
    - hunter-gatherer 4y ago
      The narrative that 'people vote with their wallets' get pushed around a lot on this forum but I fear it is often disingenuous to the nuances of a given situation. I can't really cast meaningful votes with a lot of items because I'm still at the mercy of what is manufactured and readily available. Despite not wanting a touch screen and only a barebones car, nobody is going to make one. Thus I'm left with a few options I don't like, one of which I have to take. To be clear I don't think the wallet-vote narrative is completely wrong-I just think consumers have less voting power than everyone thinks they do (in this narrative)
randomdata 4y ago
> Why is there no regulation to force non-plastic packaging when a viable alternative packing exists? Because, at least in the non-dictatorial world, regulation comes only as a result of the mass population recognizing a need to clean up the outliers who aren't comforting with the wishes of the masses. When a population is consuming 110 billion PET bottles per year that represents the masses. They are not going to enact legislation to clean up themselves. There would be no reason to since voluntarily stopping the practice of consuming said bottles would achieve the same effect.
- uoaei 4y ago
  This argument only makes sense when consumers are free to choose comparable alternatives without the plastic packaging. But realistically, consumers are typically severely limited in their selection of products. Picking the best of a bad lot doesn't mean people prefer bad things, if their selection is extremely constrained.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    It used to be you could only buy Coke in glass bottles. The mass market proved it didn't like glass bottles, so the vendors moved away from them. If the consumer preferred glass bottles it would be the plastic bottle that is hard to come by today, but in reality the consumer prefers the plastic bottle. They are much cheaper and more convenient than the glass bottle. Let's not downplay how much power the consumer actually has. A business like Coca-Cola would end up bankrupt in a matter of days if it didn't listen closely to what consumers are willing to buy. It, again, delivers plastic because that's exactly what the masses want. Business is tightly bound the whims of the consumer. Business only exists to serve the consumer. That doesn't mean people prefer bad things. The plastic bottle is clearly superior in many ways, even if has some negative externalities. There is good reason why the masses don't want to move away from it, even amid the good reasons to stop their production.
    - GrinningFool 4y ago
      The mass market didn't prove this - the only thing proved was that it cost Coca Cola less to produce and ship plastic bottles. If Coca Cola switched to glass-only again, they wouldn't lose very many customers. People want the Coke. They might have feelings about the bottle it's sold in, but they're generally not going to stop buying the Coke because the bottle changes to one that they like less. Nor, for the most part, because the price increases slightly to make up the cost difference. Whether the plastic is superior in many ways is not, in this case, indicative that the masses don't want to move away from it - the masses just want their Coke.
cute_boi 4y ago
"Why is there no regulation to force non-plastic packaging when a viable alternative packing exists?" Because democracy requires agreement with majority of people. Most people have their own problems and they don't care about PET bottles or whatever. Also, corporation are always lobbying government to not take any actions. Lobbying works because companies can get direct benefits. But many people who cares about climate changes seriously wont lobby as they don't have that much money to lobby politicians to take actions.
JamesBarney 4y ago
> Why are we not discussing that? Because it's not one company that's a bad actor, is every company that sells anything anywhere. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to just blame every company. Even if the US banned single use plastic, (which would have a ton of other negative environmental effects, due to the higher carbon and water footprint) it still wouldn't have much of an effect on where most of the Plasti CI coming from, poor countries. The blindingly obvious solution is to figure out how to help/incentivize/fund better trash management systems in poor countries.
- Synaesthesia 4y ago
  When the US does things, the whole world listens, and often follows. US corporations are all around the world, like coco-cola.
qudat 4y ago
> It distractes from the main culprits: > Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-Heinz ... etc. I think the essence of your post is that we should consider both sides of the coin: supply and demand. Both should not be immune to criticism and I agree completely with that sentiment.
rhino369 4y ago
It's not coke's fault, I want cans. If they sold it in refillable glass jugs, I'd still buy the cans. That's on me; not them.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  It absolutely is Coca-Cola's and other companies'fault. And if it makes you feel better the plastic lining in a can is still a fraction of the plastic in a PET bottle.
User23 4y ago
That and the implication that China is a poor country is pretty ridiculous at this point. Sure, there is poverty in China, but there is poverty in the west too.
gumby 4y ago
> Coca-cola alone is creating 110 billion PET bottles _per_year_. By the way Coca-Cola is the sponsor of COP27 (the annual meeting of the Paris Agreement on the climate) which is meeting in Egypt next month.
hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
> I hate how much this is made into 'rich' versus 'poor' countries. > Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-Heinz US, Swiss, US, UK, US, US, US company, respectively.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  The implication of where financial HQ is located is non-sequitur in my opinion. All those companies have massive volumes of sales across the world. You have rich and middles classes everywhere, buying these products all over the world. My point is that focusing on the 'rich nations are sending their garbage to poor nations' (which is still true) deviates from the cause which is a handful of companies forcing plastic packaging on consumers to reduce their packaging and shipping costs all while painting it as convenient for consumers, lying about the packaging 'recyclability' (just because it technically is recycable doesn't make economically feasible), and externalizing the environmental costs of their packaging (you now have microplastics circulating in our water cycle, embedded in glaciar ice, plastic in breast milk, plastic in intra-uterine placenta, etc.).
  - hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
    > The implication of where financial HQ is located is non-sequitur in my opinion. But this is exactly the definition, in your own words, of: 'rich nations are sending their garbage to poor nations'.

gadflyinyoureye 4y ago

There is a bit of a balancing act going on. If bottles moved to glass, that would increase weight and CO2. If they moved to more cans, that’s still plastic due to the liners.

joekrill 4y ago
You might have a point with glass - but the can argument is a bit of a straw man. Even coated aluminum cans are significantly better than plastic bottles. They are very easily recycled.
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
This is not about GHG emissions, this is about disposing of non-degradable plastic. But to follow your reasoning, do you have any data on the CO2 emissions of extracting, transporting and transforming crude oil into PET bottles, versus some 30% added weight to a delivery truck?
- randunel 4y ago
  I'm not sure lorries would get 30% heavier, they're already trying to maximise every load. You would, instead, get x% more traffic.
  - carlmr 4y ago
    Are they maximizing the load by space or weight? Or do they actively try to get an optimized mix of both? I would imagine glass bottles also take more space though, so still I guess there might be more traffic.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      At least the local delivery trucks are often quite empty - easier to have a big truck and not need it than a small one that runs out of room.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The vast majority of trucks don’t load full. Especially the local delivery trucks. And even those loaded by volume could probably go to glass without hitting weight limits. And if the result is more local bottling plants, that’s even better.
mrpopo 4y ago
If bottles moved to glass, many companies will quickly switch to returnable bottles, which will increase incentives to use standard bottle sizes, which in turn may reduce the distance that bottles travel, etc. It's also likely that prices will increase and therefore consumption will decrease (contributing to solving the obesity crisis in the process). You can't predict things in a vacuum. Also, how much would that increase CO2 emissions in the worst case? Plastic pollution and climate change are separate problems. If we are solving plastic pollution effectively, wouldn't it be worth a hypothetical .5% increase in global CO2 ?
- carlmr 4y ago
  We already have somewhat standardized glass bottles for easier local returns in Germany. I think it's a good system to avoid plastic trash.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Beer is almost universally glass in the US and we don’t reuse. I’d like to see standard glass bottles that are universally reusable and washable, but there are claims it’s more energy to wash than to make new (which I suspect is funny accounting).
  - tristan957 4y ago
    No brewery that I go to uses bottles for distribution. If you are talking about major beer brands, I would like to see some stats.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      https://www.beerinstitute.org/trends-beer-packaging/ https://www.beerinstitute.org/trends-beer-packaging/ > Glass bottles compose nearly one-third of all beer volume in the United States and nearly two-thirds of above premium segment volume. I think the "premium" is what I'm noticing; I kind of ignore all the large packs of aluminum beer cans (though to be honest that's the only beer I have on hand right now). What I have very rarely seen is plastic beer - only at stadiums where they don't want you throwing the bottle at the players, basically. Of course, the only proper beer container is a giant keg.
stdbrouw 4y ago
Nitpick: aluminium cans do not have a liner on the inside (unlike the laminates used for e.g. potato chips) and big brands usually print their branding straight onto the aluminium, it's only smaller brands that use plastic shrink sleeve labels.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>the main culprits: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-Heinz ... etc. And what do these giant multinational companies have in common? /s The issue is there is no unified multinational push to regulate these multinational giants. You can't have local solutions to global problems, and these companies are as global as they get, constantly chasing the places with the lowest taxes, lowest wages, least amount of regulations, most corruption, and easiest to bribe officials for access to exploiting local resources, etc. while making record profits quarter after quarter at the expense of the environment and people in less afluent places. We need global regulations for them. But that will never happen because China, the US and EU won't touch their giants as long as they're not doing anything illegal back home.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
> We need global regulations for them. But that will never happen. That is a pessimist outlook, all you need is for the EU bloc and the US to implement such measures and plastic pollution in the world would fall an order of magnitude. The problem is not lack of _global_ regulations, just spineless politicians.
- Huh1337 4y ago
  What kind of regulation of these corporations do you envision? It's not them making the waste - it's the people-consumers who are not throwing the bottles away for recycling, or their countries not recycling locally and instead just throwing away the waste somewhere else. What about that is changed by regulating Coca Cola?
  - super256 4y ago
    I think the best way is to follow the German solution: When you buy a bottle/can, you place a collateral there for each bottle, like 50 cent per bottle. You only get the deposit back when you return the bottles to some supermarket. I really like this model, and it works over here. Of course, you still need a working recycling chain, but at least it incentives individual people to properly bring their rubbish to the recycling places.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

A system that is proven to work is a container deposit; in my country they recently made it so that the .5 liter bottles of e.g. coca cola have a 25 cent deposit, which you get back if you deposit it in the right channels. It's not perfect, but it prevents a lot of these ending up in the regular waste stream. In theory these bottles can then be washed and reused, or ground up and reused or recycled. I don't know if that actually happens though.

tomp 4y ago
Your country’s government scammed citizens out of 25 cents for each bottle they buy, and brainwashed them (you?) that plastic can be recycled. Hint: plastic cannot be recycled. Burning it is carbon positive. Burying it underground is closer to carbon neutral. We should bury plastic bottles.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  Not all plastics are the same. Aren't the majority of plastic drink bottles made from PET, which has high recyclability? I agree that many plastic waste products should be burried.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted. This is the truth and honestly the best course of action at this point.

Aunche 4y ago

>I hate how much this is made into 'rich' versus 'poor' countries. It distracts from the main culprits: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-Heinz ... etc Let's not scapegoat a group that I'm a part of, and instead scapegoat a group I'm not a part of! >Sadly straws and q-tips ban is the most embarassing display of a collective of weak governments in the hands of corporate lobbying. "Lobbying" is a convenient bogeyman, but in this case, lobbyists are merely revealing the very real preference that Americans love using single use plastics. The internet thinks that lobbying is the corporations bribing politicians, but in reality, lobbying is corporations convincing politicians what is the best way to bribe their voters. Ocean plastics from consumer goods is already a solved problem anyways. Developing countries need better trash infrastructure. Even, landfills and incinerators are better than dumping it in the ocean.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
> lobbyists are merely revealing the very real preference that Americans love using single use plastics. Citation needed? So are you saying that it is the consumer that drives demand for single-use plastic? The massive cost reduction for the manufacturer has absolutely nothing to do with this push?
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Who else but the consumer is asking for rock bottom pricing? Even if not verbally, people vote with their feet and wallets. We need to restore the relationship between disposal and cost, by charging manufacturers a cost to recycle or trash. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2022-2-summer/notes-here-there/shifting-costs-recycling-manufacturers-not-consumers?amp https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2022-2-summer/notes-here-t...
  - hunter-gatherer 4y ago
    The narrative that 'people vote with their wallets' get pushed around a lot on this forum but I fear it is often disingenuous to the nuances of a given situation. I can't really cast meaningful votes with a lot of items because I'm still at the mercy of what is manufactured and readily available. Despite not wanting a touch screen and only a barebones car, nobody is going to make one. Thus I'm left with a few options I don't like, one of which I have to take. To be clear I don't think the wallet-vote narrative is completely wrong-I just think consumers have less voting power than everyone thinks they do (in this narrative)

randomdata 4y ago

> Why is there no regulation to force non-plastic packaging when a viable alternative packing exists? Because, at least in the non-dictatorial world, regulation comes only as a result of the mass population recognizing a need to clean up the outliers who aren't comforting with the wishes of the masses. When a population is consuming 110 billion PET bottles per year that represents the masses. They are not going to enact legislation to clean up themselves. There would be no reason to since voluntarily stopping the practice of consuming said bottles would achieve the same effect.

uoaei 4y ago
This argument only makes sense when consumers are free to choose comparable alternatives without the plastic packaging. But realistically, consumers are typically severely limited in their selection of products. Picking the best of a bad lot doesn't mean people prefer bad things, if their selection is extremely constrained.
- randomdata 4y ago
  It used to be you could only buy Coke in glass bottles. The mass market proved it didn't like glass bottles, so the vendors moved away from them. If the consumer preferred glass bottles it would be the plastic bottle that is hard to come by today, but in reality the consumer prefers the plastic bottle. They are much cheaper and more convenient than the glass bottle. Let's not downplay how much power the consumer actually has. A business like Coca-Cola would end up bankrupt in a matter of days if it didn't listen closely to what consumers are willing to buy. It, again, delivers plastic because that's exactly what the masses want. Business is tightly bound the whims of the consumer. Business only exists to serve the consumer. That doesn't mean people prefer bad things. The plastic bottle is clearly superior in many ways, even if has some negative externalities. There is good reason why the masses don't want to move away from it, even amid the good reasons to stop their production.
  - GrinningFool 4y ago
    The mass market didn't prove this - the only thing proved was that it cost Coca Cola less to produce and ship plastic bottles. If Coca Cola switched to glass-only again, they wouldn't lose very many customers. People want the Coke. They might have feelings about the bottle it's sold in, but they're generally not going to stop buying the Coke because the bottle changes to one that they like less. Nor, for the most part, because the price increases slightly to make up the cost difference. Whether the plastic is superior in many ways is not, in this case, indicative that the masses don't want to move away from it - the masses just want their Coke.

cute_boi 4y ago

"Why is there no regulation to force non-plastic packaging when a viable alternative packing exists?" Because democracy requires agreement with majority of people. Most people have their own problems and they don't care about PET bottles or whatever. Also, corporation are always lobbying government to not take any actions. Lobbying works because companies can get direct benefits. But many people who cares about climate changes seriously wont lobby as they don't have that much money to lobby politicians to take actions.

JamesBarney 4y ago

> Why are we not discussing that? Because it's not one company that's a bad actor, is every company that sells anything anywhere. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to just blame every company. Even if the US banned single use plastic, (which would have a ton of other negative environmental effects, due to the higher carbon and water footprint) it still wouldn't have much of an effect on where most of the Plasti CI coming from, poor countries. The blindingly obvious solution is to figure out how to help/incentivize/fund better trash management systems in poor countries.

Synaesthesia 4y ago
When the US does things, the whole world listens, and often follows. US corporations are all around the world, like coco-cola.

qudat 4y ago

> It distractes from the main culprits: > Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-Heinz ... etc. I think the essence of your post is that we should consider both sides of the coin: supply and demand. Both should not be immune to criticism and I agree completely with that sentiment.

rhino369 4y ago

It's not coke's fault, I want cans. If they sold it in refillable glass jugs, I'd still buy the cans. That's on me; not them.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
It absolutely is Coca-Cola's and other companies'fault. And if it makes you feel better the plastic lining in a can is still a fraction of the plastic in a PET bottle.

User23 4y ago

That and the implication that China is a poor country is pretty ridiculous at this point. Sure, there is poverty in China, but there is poverty in the west too.

gumby 4y ago

> Coca-cola alone is creating 110 billion PET bottles _per_year_. By the way Coca-Cola is the sponsor of COP27 (the annual meeting of the Paris Agreement on the climate) which is meeting in Egypt next month.

hcarvalhoalves 4y ago

> I hate how much this is made into 'rich' versus 'poor' countries. > Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-Heinz US, Swiss, US, UK, US, US, US company, respectively.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
The implication of where financial HQ is located is non-sequitur in my opinion. All those companies have massive volumes of sales across the world. You have rich and middles classes everywhere, buying these products all over the world. My point is that focusing on the 'rich nations are sending their garbage to poor nations' (which is still true) deviates from the cause which is a handful of companies forcing plastic packaging on consumers to reduce their packaging and shipping costs all while painting it as convenient for consumers, lying about the packaging 'recyclability' (just because it technically is recycable doesn't make economically feasible), and externalizing the environmental costs of their packaging (you now have microplastics circulating in our water cycle, embedded in glaciar ice, plastic in breast milk, plastic in intra-uterine placenta, etc.).
- hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
  > The implication of where financial HQ is located is non-sequitur in my opinion. But this is exactly the definition, in your own words, of: 'rich nations are sending their garbage to poor nations'.