Beverage company Coca-Cola has agreed to change some of the labelling on its plastic bottles in Europe to avoid misleading environmental advertising, the European Commission announced on Tuesday. This commitment came in response to a complaint issued in November 2023 by the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC). The organisation had criticised commercial claims made by major drinking water bottlers about the recyclability of the plastic bottles for their products, saying the claims were "too vague, inaccurate or/and insufficiently substantiated".
As part of a dialogue with national consumer protection authorities coordinated by the European Commission, Coca-Cola has agreed to a series of changes. Chief among them is clearer labelling. Instead of combining statements such as "I am a bottle made from 100 per cent recycled plastic" with separate disclaimers regarding the composition of the label and cap, the bottler will use the wording: "This bottle, excluding the label and cap, is made from 100 per cent recycled plastic."
Coca-Cola had also confirmed that PET bottles labelled as "made from 100 per cent recycled plastic" will not contain any material derived from virgin PET or virgin PET waste or off-cuts (by-products from bottle manufacturing) that have not gone through a recycling process governed by the Commission Regulation on recycled plastic materials intended for food contact (EU) 2022/1616.
In its response to the announcement, BEUC called Coca-Cola's commitments "good news", but said that some of the issues raised in its 2023 alert were still unresolved....
