Coca-Cola Is Making A Bottle Out Of Ocean Trash and We’re Supposed To Act Like it’s OK

Published

October 6, 2019

Filed under

Beverage Packaging, Sustainable Packaging

On the same day as the world’s first-ever Plastic Health Summit, where researchers announced that microplastics cause accelerated cell death and can potentially damage our immune system, Coca-Cola unveiled their first-ever sample bottles made using recovered marine plastic, AKA, ocean trash.

The irony is ripe. Coca-Cola, the single largest marine polluter, believes that the plastic ocean trash they are considerably responsible for could one day be used to repackage their beverages, which would then likely end up right back in the ocean. This is a poorly timed apology masquerading as a solution and is greenwashing at its finest.

In a 2018 Global Brand Audit by Break Free From Plastic, over 187,000 pieces of collected plastic marine trash were examined to identify the world’s brands that pollute our oceans and waterways.

Andrew Gibbs

Andrew Gibbs has been called an “innovator in the world of design” as the founder, CEO, and Editor-in-Chief of Dieline, founded in 2007. Andrew started Dieline Awards in 2009 to formally recognize the world’s best consumer product packaging design. The awards competition was recognized as a “global phenomenon” in its first year. In 2010, he founded Dieline Conference, an annual conference for creative professionals in the packaging design and branding industry. He now serves as Creative Director and Programming Partner for HOW Design Live, one of the largest annual gatherings of creatives in the world. In 2014, he became a faculty member at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA teaching Packaging Design. Andrew was previously named the Editor-in-Chief of HOW Design Magazine in 2015, making him the youngest editor of a design magazine ever. In 2018, Andrew became a Climate Reality Leader after training under Al Gore at the 2018 Climate Reality Corps. He joined A Plastic Planet, a U.K. based non-profit that is dedicated to dramatically reducing the amount of single use plastic used in the packaging industry. Andrew speaks and consults worldwide on the topics of packaging design and sustainable packaging.