This article unfortunately points out once again why C-Suite executives at major publicly traded company cannot be relied on to answer to anyone other than their shareholders, even if they know exactly how much damage their products are doing to the largest ecosystem in the world.
Coke brilliantly replaced the glass bottle with dirt cheap plastic and lobbied against deposit laws by convincing state and local governments that a curbside recycling program would be far more effective. Of course, what self-respecting state and local politician would ever want to leave the recycling of plastic waste in the hands of a greedy corporation. After all, more government is good government and more votes! But the big corporation was smarter, as usual. Coke is not required to purchase recycled plastics under US law, and, consequently, Coke purchases very little because it is ever so slightly more expensive. Coke has failed to do its part in the recycling process as it was required to do with incentives under the deposit laws. Interestingly, in Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Sweden, Coke is required to use recycled plastic, so it does. I am sure that all of Coke’s executives are sterling members of their local communities and they diligently recycle curbside because they have to keep their neighbors happy. But when they walk into the office each morning, they are singularly focused on the highest profit margins attainable to keep their owners happy. Seems like mandating the use of recycled plastics is a simple solution. http://www.rightrelevance.com/search/articles/hero?article=60a19d08379bf9306ae67a4221593354f53d29f4&query=plastic%20pollution #Plasticpollution #Recycledplastic #Oceanconservancy #Oceans
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