After nearly six decades, Sprite will be changing its iconic green plastic bottles to clear, translucent ones. The Coca-Cola Company, which owns Sprite, says the reason for the switch is to increase the recyclability of soda bottles, but critics note that it’s not the colour of the bottle that's the problem. It’s a fact that the bottles are still single-use plastic.
The green bottles were already recyclable, but Coca-Cola said in a media statement that non-clear plastics are usually separated from clear plastics during recycling sorting.
This is meant to prevent clear, food-grade plastics from becoming discoloured. Instead, many non-clear polyethene terephthalates (PET), like Sprite’s green bottles, are turned into “single-use items,” like clothes or carpets, according to the company.
“Taking colours out of bottles improves the quality of the recycled material,” Julian Ochoa, CEO of R3CYCLE, which is working with Coca-Cola, said in a statement.
“This transition will help increase the availability of food-grade rPET (recycled PET). When recycled, clear PET Sprite bottles can be remade into bottles, helping drive a circular economy for plastic,” he said.
Coca-Cola plans to transition to the new clear bottles for all Sprite ranges from August 1 with other brands transitioning at a later date.
Ecowatch reported on July 29 this year that environmentalists were sounding the greenwashing alarm, as Coca-Cola is still producing billions of single-use plastic bottles per year.
Rather than coming up with truly reusable solutions, the company has put extra focus on the recycling efforts of consumers in recent years.
“Coca-Cola’s recent announcement is yet another blatant greenwashing attempt from one of the world’s worst plastic polluters,” said Kate Melges, plastics project leader at Greenpeace, as reported by NPR.
“We are in the midst of a massive plastic pollution crisis and we cannot recycle our way out of it,” she said.
Like most plastic-producing companies, Coca-Cola places a huge emphasis on the fact that its packaging is 100% recyclable but it does not acknowledge the fact that a very small amount of these plastics are actually recycled.
For example, the World Wildlife Fund estimated that only around 26% of plastic is recycled in South Africa, with the remainder finding its way into landfills, waterways and the ocean.
Tiktok creator, @nomeatmashers, also accused the company of blatant greenwashing saying that “they’re not actually doing anything to reduce the amount of plastic waste being produced.”
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He said that if you search for images of polluted beaches, the green Sprite bottles immediately stand out and changing the colour to match other clear plastics will hide the amount of Sprite bottles seen on polluted coastlines.
Conservation and sustainability organisations have been calling on Coca-Cola to produce truly reusable, refillable bottles which were once normal before the rise of plastic, instead of focusing on single-use bottles and recycling.
“In 2021, Coca-Cola manufactured 125 billion single-use plastic bottles,13 billion more plastic bottles than the previous year. Instead of turning off its plastic tap, Coca-Cola is continuing to produce billions of throwaway bottles every year, impacting our health and harming our oceans, our climate, and our communities,” Melges said in a statement.
“If Coca-Cola wants to be a real leader in the fight against the plastic and climate crises, it must be more ambitious and commit to 50% reuse and refill by 2030,” she said.
Currently, Coca-Cola has a global target for 25% refillable or returnable glass or plastic packaging by the end of this decade. They say that is just not good enough.
A 2021 report by the World Wide Fund showed that South Africa is the 11th worst offender of leaking land-based plastic into the ocean, with an estimated 109 000 tonnes thrown into the ocean each year, says Lorren de Kock, WWF South Africa's project manager: Circular Plastics Economy.
Sprite originated in Germany and was introduced to the US in 1961. Sprite is also the third most popular soft drink in South Africa, after Coca‑Cola and Fanta.
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