Greenwash Watch: Drink 2 Wear T-shirts From Coke Bottles

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"