Coca-Cola promises to tackle greenwashing following BEUC complaint

The European Commission announced today that Coca-Cola has agreed to change some of its labelling practices, following a complaint for greenwashing that BEUC and its members lodged in November 2023 to European consumer authorities, with the support of Client Earth and ECOS. Today’s announcement is the first company commitment since BEUC’s complaint was filed.

BEUC welcomes Coca-Cola’s move. Yet some issues raised in the alert are still unresolved. The organisations call on authorities to maintain their efforts with Coca-Cola and other traders using the same practices - such as Danone and Nestlé flagged in BEUC’s complaint - to ensure consumers are no longer tricked by misleading recycling claims.

Coca-Cola has agreed to clarify that ‘100%’ recycling claims refer only to the plastic bottle body and not to other components, such as caps and labels. The bottle maker also commits to avoid giving the impression of a closed recycling loop. Consumer groups will carefully monitor whether Coca-Coca rolls out the announced changes.

Agustín Reyna, Director General of BEUC, commented:

“It is good news that Coca-Cola has heeded consumers’ call and commits to clarify that its ‘100%’ recycling claims only apply to parts of the bottle. However, if it’s written in small print, the ‘100%’ figure will keep giving the impression that it’s harmless to the environment to buy plastic bottles. 

“It is crystal clear that a 100% recycling rate will never be reached. Affirming that a bottle is 100% recycled or recyclable is outright misleading and should stop, just as green imagery giving the wrong impression that plastic drink bottles have zero impact on the environment. We expect authorities to monitor if Coca-Cola turns their words into deeds and to take strong measures if this is not the case.”

Background

In November 2023, BEUC and member organisations from 13 countries reported to EU consumer authorities (the CPC-Network) misleading commercial claims about the recyclability of their products by major drinking water bottle traders, such as Coca-Cola, Danone and Nestlé Waters/Nestlé.

The action was coordinated by national consumer protection authorities in Hungary and Sweden.
According to our analysis, such claims do not comply with the EU rules on unfair commercial practices. We identified three key claims of concern: 

• “100% recyclable”: This ambiguous term depends on many factors such as the available infrastructure to collect material, the effectiveness of the sorting process, or appropriate recycling processes.

• “100% recycled”: Bottle lids cannot be made of recycled materials by EU law and labels are rarely made from recycled material either. In addition, adding virgin plastic (i.e., non-recycled plastic) to the body of the bottle is also a common practice.

• Use of green imagery: Closed loops, green logos or nature images prompt the false idea of environmental neutrality.  

The recycling rate for PET bottles is estimated to be only 55% in the EU and the chance of it becoming a bottle again around 30%.

Click here to find BEUC’s dedicated page on our ‘Unbottling greenwashing’ action.