Coca-Cola’s single-use plastic bottle boondoggle.
by | Aug 3, 2024 | Articles, Climate Change, Opinion
As the site of the World Olympics in 2024, Paris naturally continues to espouse the climate change policies espoused in the Paris Accords. As such, the city has set a goal of zero-use plastic and banned single-use plastic bottles from the Olympic Games Paris 2024. Revelations that Coca-Cola has been exempted from this stricture and that some 6.4 million single-use Coca-Cola bottles will be poured into reusable cups provided to onlookers have sparked charges of hypocrisy and greenwashing.
Too often the purported benefits of climate change policy are obscured by practical realities – in the case of Coca-Cola’s Paris services, setting up 700 fountains and creating collection centers for millions of recyclable glass containers still left gaps in the provision of drinks, requiring an estimated 6.4 million single-use bottles to sate demand. Coca-Cola denies that this apparent double standard reflects hypocrisy, and there is no indication the City of Paris granted the corporate giant any exemption from its demands for a “more virtuous consumption method” than single-use plastics.
Hypocritical Policies in Paris
Errant policy often appears hypocritical. EVs generate enormous amounts of toxic pollution in their manufacture, including from coal-fired aluminum smelting plants and the mining of cobalt and lithium for their batteries. Solar panels require massive energy from coal-fired plants in their production and generate toxic chemical waste in their manufacture and disposal. Yet both EVs and solar panels are somehow exempted – like Coca-Cola’s bottles at the Olympics – from exacting environmental scrutiny in the name of environmental rescue.
The 700 fountains being erected permanently in Paris for the Olympics also have an environmental footprint – and not just one measured in carbon. The glass and other “reusable” containers conceal problems in glass recycling efficiency, which doesn’t seem to be much better than that of plastic. Will the tens of millions of supposedly reusable Paris Olympics containers be washed, stored, and shipped to Los Angeles 2028, or are they to simply be recycled? The City of Paris asserts that “recycling is not a solution for plastic pollution,” but it has not implemented a viable alternative plan, thus exposing itself and Coca-Cola to cries of favoritism and hypocrisy.
The intent of the City of Paris and the Olympic Committee might have been to reduce plastic use as much as possible, but the effect of these policies has indeed favored Coca-Cola above rival merchants and individual patrons who might have preferred to bring their own plastic-bottled drinking choices without being compelled to buy a Coke product. After this imposition on consumer choice and free markets, the Olympics-approved soft drink is then poured from a throwaway bottle into a “reusable” cup, which is more wasteful than if people just skipped the “reusable” cup as superfluous. It is no wonder critics are rankled.
Planes, Yachts, and Cow Gas
Vague climate “science” claims and dodgy policy often invite what certainly seems like hypocrisy to onlookers. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) famously condemned cow flatulence and told Americans they must eat less meat, only to be later questioned when seen with her chief of staff who was eating a hamburger. Her response was feigned outrage that someone took her picture in a public place.
AOC’s call to end cow gas also included airplanes. She claimed the Green New Deal “set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast…” Presumably, AOC still flies on fast airplanes. And while she spoke of ‘getting rid’ of them, fossil fuel powered planes are the darlings of the elitist jet-setting class.
Also making the climate hypocrisy rounds have been videos of Mark Zuckerberg’s ostentatious sea yacht, a 387-foot-long, $300 million monstrosity powered by four diesel engines delivering 5,846 horsepower apiece. Zuckerberg gave himself the helipad-equipped luxury megayacht (which requires a crew of 48) for his birthday – surely the climate will wait. Mark’s boat is smaller, after all, than climate warrior Jeff Bezos’ $500 million, 417-foot megayacht.
Bill Gates was asked about his own use of jets, but countered the reasonable question with claims of philanthropic entitlement and dubious carbon credits: “I’m comfortable with the idea that not only am I not part of the problem by paying for the offsets, but also through the billions that my breakthrough energy group is spending, that I’m part of the solution.”
And so elites dine at golf clubs, ski at chalets, and tool around conspicuously in yachts while claiming they are rescuing the world’s poor from climate catastrophe by limiting their ability to heat or cool their homes, drive their cars to work, eat hamburgers and chicken, or enjoy many other of life’s basic necessities. Marie Antoinette’s ghost must be flitting about the Paris Olympics, haunted by the hypocrisy of climate hoopla.
“Let them drink Coca-Cola!”