Coke's Global Legacy

                                                                                                                                         Mona Chalabi/The Guardian

Coca-Cola is one of the world’s most ubiquitous brands. A distinction achieved through aggressive marketing and an effective distribution system.  Coca-Cola is also the world’s largest plastic waste polluter according to a global audit performed by the environmental group Break Free From Plastic.

The environmental justice group asked 72,541 volunteers in 51 countries to collect plastic waste. Almost half (43%) of what they found were clearly marked consumer brands. Coca-Cola was named the world’s number one global plastic polluter, followed by Nestlé and Pepsico.

Volunteers were able to select the locations for their clean-up efforts and so the final results may not be a perfect representation of global trends. Nonetheless, almost 12,000 Coca-Cola products were found in 37 countries across the world.

In the United States, Coke’s hold on the top polluter spot was usurped by Nestle, a company whose bottled water is often stolen from communities that really need it so that it can be sold in single use bottles to people who believe that virtually any human activity requires immediate hydration at hand.

You can read the group’s full Global Brand Audit here.