Coca-Cola misleads market with plant-based recyclable bottle

On 14 December, the Danish environmental organisation Nepenthes filed an official complaint against Coca-Cola with the Danish Ombudsman. According to the organisation, the soft drink giant is guilty of misleading the market with its advertising for the new plant bottle in Denmark.

According to Nepenthes, Coca-Cola is exploiting consumers' environmental concerns by portraying the new plant bottle as much more environmentally friendly than standard bottles and cans. During the recent Climate Summit in Copenhagen, Coca-Cola launched the advertising campaign for this new bottle, which according to the company is made from recycled material and consists of 15% plant-based material. The bottle is said to reduce CO2 emissions by 25%.

Nepenthes accuses Coca-Cola of 'greenwashing' and false marketing. “On its website, Coca-Cola writes that the plant-based material is ethanol, which is made from sugar cane and molasses,” writes Kristian Jørgensen, chairman of Nepenthes. “This does not make the plastic climate-friendly. Indeed, this requires more land to be used for purposes other than food production. This increases the risk of deforestation to create agricultural land. This conversion results in huge emissions of CO2 stored in plants and soil. This is a common problem in the production of first-generation bioethanol. Therefore, the use of plant-based material is not necessarily good for the environment.” Furthermore, there is no documentation at all to support the 'environmentally friendly bottle' claim, Jørgensen adds. And the advertisement further states that the bottles are 100% recyclable. This is also misleading, he says. “The recycling of plastic bottles is not new. It is a standard way of making bottles in Denmark.”

If the company cannot prove that the bottle is indeed better for the environment than other bottles, the campaign violates Danish law that protects consumers against marketing based on false assumptions. In the past, Nepenthes already successfully filed a complaint against oil company Statoil, which presented its petrol with five per cent bioethanol as highly environmentally friendly in an advertising campaign.