Greenwash Watch: Drink 2 Wear T-shirts From Coke Bottles
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04.14.08
Sometimes we cannot even tell if they know they are greenwashing, or if they are doing it with tongue held firmly in cheek. Like this: Coke is introducing a line of shirts made out of recycled Coke bottles. Their VP of marketing says with a straight face “These fun t-shirts merge trend with consciousness, reminding shoppers that small steps – like recycling a few bottles – can go a long way towards helping to preserve our environment. If the 200 million Wal-Mart shoppers in the U.S. purchase these shirts, they will help us reuse and divert more than 700 million bottles from the waste stream.”
No matter that only 34% of PET bottles are recycled while the rest end up in the garbage or by the side of the road, or in the Pacific gyre, or that it is doubtful that these shirts are made in the USA, so we are probably carting these bottles halfway around the world.
It is not green to take a bottle, ship it off somewhere to be turned into fabric and sewn into t-shirts. Deposit and return systems with local bottlers refilling glass bottles are green. But Coke killed that system. ::BusinessWire and ::Brandweek
See how in the they take Coke bottles from Taiwan, make a fabric and ship it to Eastern Europe for tailoring and then sell it in the UK and call it "Ecosmart"
This is why I supply my habit with glass bottle imported from Mexico. Not only are they in glass (friends don't let friends drink from plastic) but they're made with sugar and not HFCS. AND I can buy them a flat at a time.
Silly Coke should expand their distribution for glass, HFCS-free coke and just phase out the plastic entirely.
I think I'll write a letter...
"having worked in the supply chain and knowing how hard it is to keep a recycle stream pure, I personally would never wear clothing made from recycled polymer if it were to be in skin contact. And I would especially never give such to children."
Can you provide any information to back this up?
Many thanks.
"anonymous expert"?!?! Scooby, get the batmobile, I wanna be an anonymous expert too, but I'll go one better: I now declare myself an influential anonymous professional oxymoron expert. Please quote my brilliance ad nauseam!
LA: the comment from the "anonymous expert" was proving to be a distraction from the main point, and I have removed it.
If you have ever traveled in developing nations you may have noticed that people use bottles, cans, and carboys to hold many things for which they were not intended, including pesticides. Even people in developing nations do this sometimes. Look on grandpa's garage shelf, or in the backyard shed.
Poisonings can result from container re-use; and chemicals not intended for such containers seep into the polymer pores and remain there.
Additionally, the reclamation of empty containers proceeds through an intermediate, independent step of "Chipping." Chips may be washed with hot soapy water, but that is no guaranteed that the chipping equipment has not been used for non-soda bottles and that the reclaim plastic chips have been sampled and tested periodically to ensure suitability for skin contact.
More needs to be known before such practices are proclaimed to be both "Green" and "Safe"
On the subject of going back to glass bottles--AMEN! I miss those glass bottles! Is it really all that cheap to keep cranking out plastic bottles all the time?
I for one would be more than happy to turn in my Coke bottles again. Bring it on, Coke!
Just curious how this factors into the other companies that use recycled materials in clothing. Patagonia seems to get praised here, as do Nau and others. Do they have some safeguard to ensure that recycled plastics that they are using cannot have been contaminated? Or is this a brand equity argument? That is, we despise Coke for creating much of this junk plastic in the first place, so they can take their recycled clothes and bugger off, but Patagonia and Nau (and others) seem to be on the up and up so we'll buy theirs?
(Or is the problem that Coke is making these recycled materials available to the masses at reasonable prices?)
Yes, I'll admit, I'm playing devil's advocate here, and I'd quite like to sport Nau and Patagonia threads, whereas I won't be caught dead wearing Coke ones from Walmart. It is, however, sad that Coke is being attacked here for working recycled plastic into clothing - a practice that is often and regularly praised on treehugger.
How about we quit making ethanol from corn and plastic from oil and make biodegradable plastic from corn?
Or does that make too much sense?
This sounds like Interface Australia. They take up used carpet and ship it to Georgia in the USA to be recycyled. I wonder how much fuel that took to get to George to be "recycled"