Environmental campaigners have urged Coca-Cola to reduce its plastic footprint by stopping the use of single-use plastic bottles.
Greenpeace installed a “piece of art right” to the doorstep of Coca-Cola's European office on 9 April in protest against what it described as “ocean plastic pollution”.
“As the world's largest soft drinks company, Coca-Cola has a special responsibility for the plastic that is wrecking our oceans,” the campaigner group said on 9 April.
According to Greenpeace data, Coke produces over 100 billion “throwaway” plastic bottles every year, which the campaigner group said mostly fail to be recovered.
Single-use plastic bottles, said Greenpeace, make up nearly 60% of all the drinks packaging Coke sells around the world.
“And these throwaway bottles are on the rise. Single-use plastic bottles make up 12% more of Coca-Cola's packaging than they did a decade ago, while the proportion of refillable containers has dropped from just under a third to just a quarter,” the group claimed.
Greenpeace also claimed that Coca-Cola was “less than halfway” towards its 2015 target to use 25% pf recycled or renewable sources for the production of its bottles. The recycled content figure, said Greenpeace, currently stands at 7% on average across Coca-Cola's global plastic bottle sales.