Were you one of the thousands of people who sent a plastic bottle to Coke or Pepsi telling them to “take it back and use it again?” If so, congratulate yourself, you have helped win a partial victory in a national campaign to get these companies to use recycled plastic in their bottles. Until recently Coke and Pepsi refused to take back any recycled bottles to reuse the plastic, choosing instead to use plastic made from non-renewable oil and natural gas. After pressure from consumers, first Coke and now Pepsi have both committed to use 10 percent recycled plastic. However, this is a far cry from the 25 percent both companies promised back in 1990, so the campaign continues.

Pepsi’s decision to follow Coke’s lead in using recycled plastic came much more quickly than Coke’s, without the same intense public pressure it took to get Coke to change its policy. After seeing Coke take the heat in full page New York Times ads, campus protests, and a letter-writing campaign directed at Coke’s CEO, Pepsi apparently did not want to be the target of the same kind of relentless grassroots effort. So just as the campaign against Pepsi started gaining momentum, the company “rolled” and made public their own intention to use recycled plastic.

Although recyclers can celebrate in this first-step victory, there is more work to do, according to the Grassroots Recycling Network (GRRN) in Athens, GA (EcoCycle is a founding member of GRRN). For example, Pepsi says they need three years to meet the 10 percent level, while it took Coke just several months to do the same thing in three-quarters of the bottles they produce. Ultimately, the campaign will not stop until Coke and Pepsi fulfill their promise to use 25 percent recycled content, a realistic goal considering Coke already does it in Australia.

The campaign also seeks to bolster the declining recycling rate for cans and bottles, which not only results in costly litter clean-up programs but is a waste of natural resources. With 114 billion bottles and cans going to landfills and incinerators every year, enormous pressure is put on natural resources needed to produce these one-use bottles. Making bottles from virgin resources requires more energy and results in greater greenhouse gas emissions than producing bottles from recycled plastic.

The decline in the recycling rate for bottles and cans is due mostly to states (including Colorado) that do not have container deposit legislation. States that do have such legislation have boosted recycling rates for beverage containers to 80 percent. GRRN is trying to reverse the declining recycling rates for these containers by working with industry to achieve an 80 percent recycling rate by 2005 (see sidebar). Currently, the rate stands at just 41 percent, and would be even lower if not for the ten states that offer a deposit refund to customers for every can and bottle returned to the store.

The progress in this campaign demonstrates that companies are sensitive to grassroots pressure and will do the right thing when put in the spotlight. Industry goes to great lengths to hide anti-environmental activities, but when the public demands change and won’t let go of industry’s pant-leg, success is only a matter of time.