Coke sponsorship of global climate summit draws activist ire

The COP27 international climate summit doesn’t begin until November, but one of the conference’s sponsors, Coca-Cola, is already drawing the ire of climate advocates, who note the company’s outsized role in the carbon-intensive production of single-use plastics.

The company “produce[s] 120 billion plastic throwaway bottles each year, and 99 percent of plastics are made from fossil fuels,” Lisa Ramsden, senior plastics campaigner at Greenpeace USA, told The Hill.

“The more plastic they are producing, the more carbon that is being emitted into the atmosphere, so it's ironic and it's baffling that they are able to sponsor this really important conference on climate change,” she added.

A number of other large corporations are listed as sponsors for the event, including Microsoft, Siemens Power and IBM. However, the role of plastics and plastic production in environmental degradation makes Coca-Cola’s presence particularly egregious, Ramsden said.

“If plastics were a country, plastics would be the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. So I think that by letting Coke sponsor this conference, we're just kind of ignoring the fact that plastics are a huge, huge contributor to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions,” she said.

Sustainability consultant Georgia Elliott-Smith, a delegate to last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, has garnered more than 230,000 signatures for a petition seeking to remove Coca-Cola as a sponsor as of Tuesday afternoon.

The soda giant has defended its role in the conference and its environmental impact in general, setting a goal of 25 percent reusable packaging by the end of the decade. Critics, however, have accused the company of greenwashing, or misrepresenting the environmental friendliness of their activities. The global coalition Break Free From Plastic named Coca-Cola the single worst plastic polluter worldwide for the fourth consecutive year in its annual audit last October.

Coca-Cola also “claims that they will collect a bottle or a can for everyone that is sold. And I guess my question is, to what end, because the majority of these plastics aren't being recycled,” Ramsden said. She pointed to a Greenpeace report released earlier this week indicating about 95 percent of U.S. plastic waste is never actually recycled.

The Hill has reached out to Coca-Cola for comment.