Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/14/coca-cola-packaging-pollution-on-uk-beaches-surfers-against-sewage-study

by cfarm • 7 years ago

256 194 7 years ago

theguardian.com

andrewshadura• 7 years ago

…on UK beaches.

mooneater• 7 years ago

Even with zero packaging, their product is addictive poison. Buffett has spoken proudly of how, normally the human body would not be able to drink that much sugar without getting immediately sick, but the coke formula overcomes that sugar overload response. Disgusting.

tapland4• 7 years ago

It's the same as any other soda, squash, juice etc.

maxxxxx3• 7 years ago

That’s actually something I have been thinking about. How do they get so much sugar into a drink? You could never produce something drinkable with this amount of sugar.

hombre_fatal2• 7 years ago

A quick search shows that juices are at least as sugary if not moreso, especially grape juice.

I live next to a shop that squeezes fresh juice, but I mix it with at least three parts carbonated water. Otherwise it's such an easy way to overconsume calories. And possibly the least fulfilling way, as well.

tapland4• 7 years ago

Sugar is very soluble?

It's not at all hard and as prviously stated, fruit juices contain at least as much sugars naturally.

dev_north_east• 7 years ago

What about Coke Zero?

youeseh• 7 years ago

Why don't more drinks come in reusable glassware and milk crates? Are single use cans and cardboard packages cheaper? Safer?

maxxxxx3• 7 years ago

“Convenience”

SSchick• 7 years ago

Cheaper to produce, cheaper to transport and generally favoured by consumers due to weight and easy disposal.

tapland4• 7 years ago

Because reusable usually means crushing the class and making new bottles. Recycled aluminium saves more energy than the glass process.

MivLives2• 7 years ago

They're talking about returnables which is how beer used to come. Imagine instead of just recycling your beer bottles you hauled it back to the store for it to be sent back to vendor. I've worked around refillable milk containers and it was a pain in the ass, beer I can only imagine is more so.

sameOld_sameOld• 7 years ago

Remember the McDonald's styrofoam crisis of the 1980's?

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/11/nyregion/mcdonald-s-is-ur...

jdavis703• 7 years ago

The beverage industry knows they have a festering PR problem. I recently got a random poll from the American Beverage Association. They were primarily interested in understanding how people feel about the industry’s sustainability (or lack thereof). The good news is based on some of the questions they asked it sounds like they’re considering bringing back glass containers.

darkpuma• 7 years ago

I hope they do, it would be a huge boon to sea glass enthusiasts.

SteveGerencser2• 7 years ago

The survey found that 10 companies were responsible for more than half of the identifiably branded rubbish found on the UK’s beaches."

But are they? Isn't this shifting the blame from the end user that improperly disposes of their trash to the company? Sure, they could do more to reduce packaging issues, but in the end, it is the consumer that is tossing these things out rather than recycling them.

AYBABTME• 7 years ago

If you develop an app, and everybody using your app always ends up deleting their data by clicking on the wrong button, and then people complain that your app loses data...

...in the end, the users are wrong in the moment, but the real problem is that your app allows a behavior that has negative outcomes, and the proper fix isn't to educate people, but to make it impossible for people to click that delete button so easily, or maybe make the deletion recoverable.

Maybe the users of coca-cola bottles are the problem, but maybe coca-cola should be made to not make products that have a propensity to be misused.

chapium• 7 years ago

On the otherhand I have tons of first hand experience with bottles, and its a very simple task to take care of your own trash. Its just a matter of doing it.

liamkinne• 7 years ago

Your design example doesn't apply because the end user in this case isn't directly effected by their negligence.

There is clear evidence that littering is societal. See how clean Japanese cities are despite almost everything being wrapped in plastic.

m4632• 7 years ago

I think the bottle deposit is an interesting optimization.

That said, I remember being in mexico and when you buy a coke "to go", they don't want to bottle to walk away. So they helpfully pour it in a plastic bag, stick a straw in it and seal the plastic bag to the straw with a rubber band.

serf• 7 years ago

in the end, the users are wrong in the moment, but the real problem is that your app allows a behavior that has negative outcomes, and the proper fix isn't to educate people, but to make it impossible for people to click that delete button so easily, or maybe make the deletion recoverable.

this is the kind of thinking that kills apps for power-users, and leads to dark patterns.

You're not wrong, but I don't really like to think about how those kind of practices could be applied to social problems and government.

"We don't want X people doing Y, so let's subtly make it harder for X people to continue doing Y, without wholeheartedly admitting our intent." seems like a really slippery slope.

loco5niner• 7 years ago

If you develop an app, and everybody using your app always ends up deleting their data by clicking on the wrong button, and then people complain that your app loses data...

Throwing trash on the ground is not comparable to clicking the wrong button.

There is no confusion going on here, only laziness.

Djvacto• 7 years ago

I think a big part of the issue is also about what packaging choices are made, materials-wise. Surely not to say that people chucking their aluminum cans in the trash aren't also part of the problem, but corporations have a much bigger amount of influence and fault for pollution (packaging and non-packaging-wise).

devoply• 7 years ago

Ban plastic bottles. Make them use glass bottles in a closed cycle where the bottles are constantly cycled and then turned into something else when they can't be cycled... or use aluminum which is recyclable.

And let's call out recycling for the sham that it is. Recycling is a lie for plastics, plastics can not be economically recycled. They must be banned and the polluters made to internalize the externality.

hombre_fatal2• 7 years ago

Any Lidl near me in Prague in 2009 would take glass bottles and give you a cash deposit back.

The USA will probably get something like that when it catches up in 100 years.

m4632• 7 years ago

I like aluminum better.

Glass bottles are not perfect. They are lots heavier, which leads to transportation pollution. They also break and hurt people.

As to plastics - You are correct, they do not recycle and when you try to do it, even with a very low ratio of recycled to new plastics you end up with crappy weak plastic - think laundry baskets that have handles that break easily.

i think we should just learn to burn plastics - efficiently and cleanly.

redwall_hp• 7 years ago

Glass bottles weigh about 10 times more than plastic bottles. Enjoy all the extra CO2 from shipping.

xorfish2• 7 years ago

Recycling is a lie for plastics, plastics can not be economically recycled.

That is simply not true, just go to most of Europe. In Switzerland 83% of PET bottles get recycled. 0% ends up directly in landfills.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/fact-check_is-switzerland-the-w...

netsharc• 7 years ago

I remember reading (yeah, not much of a citation, I know...) that recycling was invented so people wouldn't feel so bad about disposable packaging.

Considering recycling can mean shipping trash to a poor country, it's not the ultimate environment rescuer. (Doesn't mean we should stop doing it, obviously)

forgotmypw37• 7 years ago

Most plastic packaging is not recyclable.

Most plastic packaging is not recycled.

Most "segregated" bins look about the same inside. (Personal experience, I'm a freegan.)

Most "recyclable" shit is just shipped to another country.

Yeah, I have to agree with you there.

bandushrew• 7 years ago

As someone else has said above: companies are using a material that lasts 10,000 years for items that are single-use. That should be outright illegal unless there are literally no alternatives.

Its insanely wasteful when you view it like that.

NeedMoreTea5• 7 years ago

Industry shifted blame, and created "keep America Beautiful" as part of lobbying against common sense regulation.

Why shouldn't we shift blame back to the idiots what created it - for a bit more profit - once again?

rienbdj• 7 years ago

It doesn't matter whos fault it is. The only point in the system where we can reasonably fix it is at these companies.

rexpop2• 7 years ago

Right. There isn't an ethical way to "upgrade" human operating system.

It's infuriating to me how so many Hacker Newsites refuse to hold corporations accountable for their design flaws.

forgotmypw37• 7 years ago

If 1% of billions of plastic bottles end up in the environment, that's still a lot of bottles.

I bet that accidental litter, for which no one person is "to blame", is more than 1%.

This is stuff like a bag tearing open, a trash can falling over, stuff falling off the truck.

m3nu• 7 years ago

Just spent 2 weeks on Sabah, Borneo. Even the very remote beaches hours away from large human settlements are littered with plastic bottles and grocery bags. While diving you often see bags floating around. Both, on the surface and below.

Ironically even the island hopping boat carried a tray of bottled water for anyone to take. Not sure what % of bottles gets left behind at the end of the day.

Maybe a small deposit on each bottle would help to essentially pay people to collect them.

siedes3• 7 years ago

A small deposit is no incentive. Now if it were a significant amount like $.50-$1.00 per bottle you recycle, then you'd have people literally racing to get those bottles. Then just increase the price on the drinks itself by a bit to make up for that, which is also a disincentive to discourage a number of people from buying them in the first place.

jerrysievert3• 7 years ago

oregon has 90% redemption rate[1] at 10 cents per bottle, so there is obviously some incentive.

1. https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-bottle-deposit-redem...

TecoAndJix• 7 years ago

The issue with that is it would be cheaper to produce counterfeit bottles, breaking the entire system

kayamon• 7 years ago

In California they have CRV, which is a kinda significant recycling amount.

However it doesn’t stop people throwing away plastic stuff. What it _does_ do, is create a job for the army of homeless people to go around collecting bottles so they can claim that sweet cashback.

It’s effectively a very strange way of employing people at far below minimum wage to keep the streets clean. Very odd.

baroffoos2• 7 years ago

Most of Australia has 10c deposits on plastic bottles. You virtually never see them laying around outside. Its fairly common to see homeless people walking around with bags full of bottles they found in public bins or on the street.

We also have a 10c charge on plastic bags at supermarkets and you rarely see those floating around anymore and people use them multiple times now.

Coffee cups and fast food boxes are all over the side of the street unfortunately.

Its amazing what a massive difference such a tiny fee can make.

JauntyHatAngle• 7 years ago

From first hand experience, you're wrong.

I had a real littering problem around an area I used to live in, council installed a recycling station that people could bring bottles to for a cash reward (10c a bottle).

It worked. Not only did people stop throwing the bottles on the ground as much, we had people driving around the area trying to find discarded plastic bottles, and there was a noticeable improvement on the amount of discarded bottles around the area within months.

The only real problem was people rifling through recycling bins trying to make a buck.

code_duck3• 7 years ago

In Oregon there are homeless people who ride around in bikes with trailers collecting cans and bottles all day. A couple sacks full is worth $20.

stevekemp2• 7 years ago

Small deposits certainly add up. Here in Helsinki you pay 0.15 - 0.50 extra when you buy bottled/canned drinks, and you can return the empty containers to pretty much any shop to get your cash.

There are homeless people who survive on the income from collecting bottles in the city-center, in parks, and even from rubbish-bins. It's not unusual to see a small group of people with large plastic-bags containing hundreds of empty cans/bottles.

amatecha• 7 years ago

That already exists in many places! Here in BC there's regulation around recyclables and minimum deposit pricing: http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/free...

One interesting result of this program is you may find people scrounging around neighbourhoods and trash cans to collect the recyclables so they can collect the deposit on them :)

beenBoutIT2• 7 years ago

We have that now in the Berkeley/Oakland area.

anonymous51333• 7 years ago

The locals will clean it up when they start to realize that their tourism industry is going to collapse if their country gets the reputation of being a trashy place to visit.

theabsurdman• 7 years ago

Good read about how, as far back as the 50's, the beverage industry used the "Keep America Beautiful" campaign to shift blame and responsibility for pollution onto consumers: https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec...

judge2020• 7 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the "#trashtag" movement from earlier this year was created and spread by beverage companies.

PorterDuff2• 7 years ago

That's an interesting article.

I remember that years ago a project at the University of Arizona was doing archaeological work on landfills. It turned out that surprising amount of the non-degrading material found once you dug down a bit was telephone books.

PorterDuff2• 7 years ago

Hang on, here you go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson_Garbage_Project

TheSpiceIsLife• 7 years ago

newspapers dumped in landfills as much as over half a century ago, turn up again as fresh and as readable as the day they were issued.

Amazing.

I imagine if the paper were shredded and mixed with organic matter it might brake down more rapidly, but layered and trapped away underground evidently not.

makomk• 7 years ago

Well, that's certainly one method of carbon sequestration...

flyGuyOnTheSly• 7 years ago

Thank goodness.

Finally, somebody with some clout is pointing fingers at the largest contributor to garbage... the corporations who produce it.

I live in Canada and Tim Horton's cups literally litter every street corner in every big city in our country.

I have always thought that they should be responsible for the cleanup of those cups.

It is absolutely their fault that their customers are throwing their products onto our ground.

Why should our overburdened local governments carry the cost of picking up a profitable business' garbage?

dd363• 7 years ago

Producer responsibility is a well-studied economic concept. It’s a shame progress like that halted a long time ago.

briandear• 7 years ago

Shouldn’t the consumer be responsible for throwing their trash away properly? The local government is a government of the local people: if the people would stop throwing stuff on the ground, there wouldn’t be so much trash to pick up. That burden is created by the local people. Should paint companies be held responsible for graffiti?

ethbro3• 7 years ago

Yes.

But unfortunately, it's infeasible to penalize them directly. And the panopticon required to do so would cause more harm than benefit. Ergo, we target upstream as the least bad solution.

osrec3• 7 years ago

Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the corporation if they are instilling a polluting culture that benefits them. There are edge cases in this argument of course, but in my opinion, a large number of companies produce mountains of wasteful unrecyclable packaging in the name of brand-building or low cost. They use this to bolster their business, and therefore they should be ultimately responsible for cleaning it up.

markdown• 7 years ago

The local government is a government of the local people

And that government, knowing that relying on individuals hasn't worked, still needs to find a way to solve the problem. A possible solution is to make the corporation responsible for the trash they produce. Once this happens, the corporation will begin to explore options such as rewarding customers for returning used cups, providing reusable cups, and even employing people to pick up any of their cups littered throughout the city.

anonymous51333• 7 years ago

Yes, absolutely. We as a culture need to emphasize people to pick up their trash and be responsible for their own litter. Lots of other culture emphasize this and you rarely see trash on the ground. Trash on the ground is a direct result of the culture saying "who cares if I toss trash on the ground."

yostrovs• 7 years ago

The solution from Tim Hortons point of view would be to stop putting their name on disposable coffee cups.

koube• 7 years ago

I don't think corporations are solely to blame. In Japan they use a lot of plastic packaging[0], and have a lack of public rubbish bins[1], yet they don't litter[2]. Can we not hold customers accountable as well for not disposing of their garbage properly, as they do in Japan?

[0] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xd573w/japans-excessive-p...

[1] https://jpninfo.com/54373

[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/why-japanese-dont-lit...

PetahNZ• 7 years ago

They also fine you up to $5,000 and give you community service if you litter.

astazangasta• 7 years ago

I would pay at least $5 per item never to see Styrofoam packaging again. But this is impossible because the market is incapable of offering me this sort of thing. Putting it on consumers is unfair.

metaphor• 7 years ago

Why should our overburdened local governments carry the cost of picking up a profitable business' garbage?

As an outsider looking in, perhaps because local governments are largely funded by taxpayers, and taxpayers are ultimately the root cause of the litter?

Consider the status quo of litter in countries like Japan and Singapore.

I think if the problem is to be effectively solved, things need to happen on 3 fronts: local government that establishes effective law/infrastructure, companies with cognizance that take meaningful action, and a population with the right cultural values.

Zenst• 7 years ago

"It is absolutely their fault that their customers are throwing their products onto our ground." WAT!

A company is not responsible for it's irresponsible consumers!

Also their no scapegoat for irresponsible people who litter. That is the crux of the issue here.

Rallying against a large corporation because people litter with their product is effectively excusing people who litter. That is wrong - don't go there.

dingaling• 7 years ago

A company is not responsible for it's irresponsible consumers!

No but they are responsible for foisting externalities onto society in order to save a few cents per transaction.

If they only sold coffee in steel thermal capped mugs, for $5 each, then the litter problem would evaporate. But that would require more expensive logistics and storage and transactional overhad.

slovette• 7 years ago

So by that logic, if I sold you a car and you abandoned it in the middle of a busy freeway, it would then be my fault?

I’m not on the side of big business, ever really. But this is insane logic (today it’s all to common too). The PEOPLE doing the littering are the problem, if it’s not a coke can it’s something else. Assign responsibility where it’s deserved. It easy to blame big money and business these days for the shortcomings of people.

Make it a crime with not only a hefty fine, but demanded personal time on community service. Some people don’t care about money, but everyone cares about their time.

It works just fine for the Japanese and in Singapore.

frosted-flakes2• 7 years ago

I've been thinking about this lately. How hard would it be for Tim Hortons to implement a deposit system for re-usable plastic cups? A deposit cup could cost two dollars, and every time you buy coffee you hand in your dirty cup and they give you a clean one. To encourage people to use the deposit cups, charge 10 cents each for disposable cups. If you want your two dollars back, just return the cup.

It wouldn't slow down drive throughs at all, because unlike using your own re-usable cups, deposit cups can be filled before you get to the window. They would need to develop some standard language to make ordering simple, but people would get used to it fast enough, especially if they make deposit cups the default after a while.

Tim Hortons is on every street corner, so it already has a strong network effect, making something like this feasible (I bet most Tims customers are regulars).

The cups would be standard, so an automated cup washer wouldn't be too difficult. They could also be semi-insulated, which would be a huge improvement over those flimsy cardboard sleeves or double cups (which is usually what happens).

DrOctagon• 7 years ago

Why can't we just go to 100% aluminium for beverage packaging? The technology and supply chains etc. are already in place.

reaperducer3• 7 years ago

I'm OK with this. Or even glass.

According to the interwebs, it wasn't until the 1960's that plastic bottles became popular in the United States, but I don't remember them until the early 80's.

Before then, soda always came in cans with pull-tabs that would slice your toes open at the beach.

MivLives2• 7 years ago

As someone who has worked in the beverage industry. Please don't bring back glass. It's so heavy, it's fragile, and it don't stack efficiently. Beer is finally moving to cans a change which has only happened in the last few years. It's easier to move and store, a twelve oz can takes up about 3/5s the space of a 12oz bottle.

haylel• 7 years ago

I think the aluminium cans have a thin plastic or polymer coating on the inside too, which stops the drink from tasting like metal... so not sure if it's 100% plastic free either.

elFarto• 7 years ago

They do have a liner, here's a video of someone removing the can from the coke:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1pB6O6AYMU

andrewstuart• 7 years ago

I noticed the other day that garbage is everywhere - and it's pretty much ALL packaging of one form or another.

musgrove• 7 years ago

Technically, Coca-Cola consumers are the most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches. That's a lot different than what the title states. Since Coca-cola is the largest seller of beverages in containers, it only is common sense that would be true. But hey, blame Coke. Let's blame the ocean for people drowning as well, or the local utilities for people being electrocuted or gravity for people falling to their death.

sydd• 7 years ago

This is the same philosophy that led to the bank crysis in 2009. Banks were saying that it's not their fault; rather the government was at fault with its lax regulations.

djmips• 7 years ago

Do you really think you are going to solve this by training all the individual people responsible for litter?

dev_dull• 7 years ago

I was a little surprised when traveling in India the first time and I got a soda. They expect you to wait and give them back the glass bottle once you’re done. This was at a local stand, of course there’s plastic bottles elsewhere.

At first it felt weird, but then I realized how much better it is for everyone and for the environment to reuse glass bottles. The bottles are washed and reused and even if they ended up in the ocean, we’ll, the world was none the worst for it.

It made me sad we moved away from this. I’d love to see glass used more often again for drinks.

redorb• 7 years ago

20k identifiable pieces of trash, small sample size. Even if it's good math ~ perhaps its a numbers game of popularity in brands? Coke was 15% Pepsi 10% ... and I'm sure other brands of aluminum can waste we're their proportional share..

darkFunction• 7 years ago

A lot of discussion on this thread revolves around whose responsibility it is to ensure clean-up of plastic waste (producers or consumers) while ignoring the fact that companies are using a material that lasts 10,000 years for items that are single-use. That should be outright illegal unless there are literally no alternatives.

RobertRoberts6• 7 years ago

Is it really debatable about "who" left the garbage on the ground?

Even if something only lasts a couple years, do we still want biodegrading trash littering everything? (we have raw food products right now, I wouldn't want those on the beach either...)

NeedMoreTea5• 7 years ago

Oh come on.

It's abundantly clear that placing blame and expectation entirely on the shoulders of consumers is bollocks. Humans drop litter - just look at any festival, concert, or sports match. When it was your granddad it was mostly paper bags, maybe wrapped in newspaper, maybe a few crown corks. The glass got carefully taken home as there was a hefty deposit on those beer bottles! Now it's knee-deep single use everywhere.

That hasn't changed as you look at poorer countries, or back into the past. What has changed is extensive industry lobbying pretending it's not fucking obvious and working to abolish deposit and return schemes, and use of far more benign materials - like glass. It's as bad as tobacco or asbestos all over again.

The same plastic industry that fucking lobbied the government against suggestions that plastic packaging should contain a third recycled plastic.

Not only should it be outright illegal, countless industry's execs are deserving of lengthy spells in prison or a law that says you can chuck used plastic in their mansion's garden. :)

dirkc• 7 years ago

Sometimes people litter by accident. On many hikes I've picked up things which have either fallen out of a backpack - like a still sealed energy drink - or was forgotten there - like a jacket.

chewz• 7 years ago

Overconsumption should be illegal.

What if every person had been issued a certain limited credit amount for a lifetime? And then they can decide what to do:

- drink from plastic bottles - have children - have a personal car - wear cotton t-shirts - go some retail therapy - have a large lawn - fly to exotic vacations - ...

The list continues....

zygimantasdev• 7 years ago

this would fit perfectly in socialist country. Want toiler paper? get papers and wait in line

scotty79• 7 years ago

What if this credit could be not equal for everybody but adjusted by how useful persons contributions are for other people? It could be dynamic!

Wait, we already have that. It's called money and doesn't help all that much for polution from single use, forever trash items. Maybe they are just priced wrong?

I think if government just cleaned up the oceans and sent bill to Coca-Cola for each bottle, market would solve things fairly quickly.

jimmaswell• 7 years ago

How about "Litterers most common source of pollution on beaches"?

resters• 7 years ago

The negative externalities of Warren Buffet's fortune are truly cataclysmic for the environment.

jimnotgym• 7 years ago

Coke still tastes better from glass bottles.

Glass bottles are reuseable.

Hang on, why not use glass?

Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

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