Press Statement
For Immediate Release
October 29, 2019
America’s largest beverage companies announce initiative to maintain plastic use
Washington, DC – America’s largest beverage companies announced an Every Bottle Back initiative today that touts the recyclability of their plastic bottles, including the caps. The American Beverage Association, alongside Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Keurig Dr. Pepper, called it a “groundbreaking sustainability initiative.” The initiative’s website also states that “many other companies want to reuse the plastic from our bottles in the products they make like shirts, coats, park benches and playground equipment.”
In response to the news, Greenpeace USA Global Plastics Project Leader Graham Forbes said:
“This is just more recycled material from the PR world as these companies flounder to keep their increasing plastic-use alive. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo were just named two of the top three plastic polluters globally for the second year in a row, yet alongside Keurig Dr. Pepper they are doubling down on recycling as the primary way out of the plastic pollution crisis. These companies should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to sell Americans on a pipe dream of recyclability rather than owning up to their role in polluting our oceans, waterways, and communities.
“We have news for the American Beverage Association: their Every Bottle Back initiative will get very few bottles back, because the all-time recycling rate for throwaway plastic is less than 10 percent. These ‘convenient and shatterproof’ bottles will end up polluting our environment like they always have. Putting the onus on people to just recycle more, rather than the companies reducing their throwaway plastic, is cowardly. If these companies were serious about addressing the plastic pollution crisis, they would stop making so much plastic and shift toward systems of reuse.”
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Contact: Perry Wheeler, Greenpeace USA Senior Communications Specialist, P: 301-675-8766
