|
May 09, 2001
Coke Takes Small Step Toward Recycling; Pepsi Drags Its Heels
by Mark Thomsen
At recent annual meetings, Coke announces recycling targets while Pepsi says it will talk.
SocialFunds.com --
Socially responsible investors made some progress in their efforts to get Coca-Cola (ticker: KO) and Pepsi (PEP) to use recycled content
in their beverage containers. At Coke's annual meeting on April 18, Chairman and CEO Douglas Daft
announced that the country's number one soft-drink maker was committing to using 10 percent
recycled content by 2005. At Pepsi's meeting on May 2, however, Chairman and CEO Steven Reinemund
did not commit to any targets. Pepsi has agreed, though, to continuing dialogue on the issue.
 Both shareowner resolutions made
non-binding proposals calling for making plastic bottles with 25 percent recycled plastic, and
achieving an 80 percent national recycling rate for bottles and cans. The Coke resolution received
5.2 percent approval, and the Pepsi resolution received 8.1 percent approval.
"These
shareholder resolutions are readily achievable, based on what is already being done," said Bill
Sheehan, national network coordinator for the Athens, Georgia-based GrassRoots Recycling Network. "Coke is currently sold in plastic
soda bottles made with 25 percent recycled plastic in such countries as Australia, New Zealand, and
Sweden," he added.
Sheehan also said the 80 percent recycling rate is already being
achieved by ten states through a refundable deposit program, or bottle bill. In such programs,
consumers typically pay 5 or 10 cents for each bottle or can when they purchase packaged beverages,
and receive the money back when they return the empty containers.
According to Pat
Franklin, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute (CRI), both Coke and
Pepsi have opposed bottle bill legislation in various states. CRI, the Grassroots Recycling
Network and other recycling advocates have been challenging Coke and Pepsi to find alternatives
that achieve 80 percent recycling. Even though curbside recycling increased 22 percent from 1994
to 1997, recycling rates for aluminum cans, glass containers and PET bottles have actually declined
since 1994.
The huge popularity of PET (polyethylene terraphthallate, a plastic polymer)
bottles has increased the amount of beverage container waste going to dumps. CRI says the volume
of PET soda bottles being landfilled doubled from 1990 to 1999. The Institute estimates that if
Coke and Pepsi used 25 percent recycled content, the PET soda bottle recycling rate would be
boosted from 36 percent to 61 percent.
Coke and Pepsi actually pledged to use 25 percent
recycled plastic in soda bottles sold in the U.S. on the same day in 1990. The associated added
costs discouraged the companies from implementing major initiatives, however, and by 1994 each
company had given up on using recycled plastic.
In its response to the shareowner
resolution, Pepsi said it could not require bottlers to use containers with recycled content since
it had separated or sold all of its U.S. bottling businesses. It also stated that the costs of
using recycled content were significantly higher, and "where our bottlers have used plastic bottles
with recycled content in the past, even when heavily promoted, consumers did not respond in a way
to justify the increased cost for the bottles."
When considering the overall picture, some
would say the increased cost can justified through the resulting decrease in resource and energy
use, landfilling, and pollution. According to an Argonne National Laboratory report published
several years ago, recycling an aluminum can saves up to 75 percent of the energy required to
produce it from raw materials, and recycling a PET bottle saves up to 87 percent. Energy
conservation seems particularly relevant when the most populous state in the country is
experiencing rolling blackouts from a lack of energy supply.
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Top
| 
