Oceana Urges Coca-Cola to Expand Refillable Bottles in PH

International marine conservation group Oceana is urging Coca-Cola to expand its use of refillable bottles in the Philippines to help curb the country’s growing single-use plastic pollution problem.

The call comes as Oceana released its latest report, Coca-Cola’s World With Waste, which criticizes the beverage giant’s continued reliance on single-use plastic despite mounting environmental and health concerns.

The report highlights that Coca-Cola is still selling some products in refillable glass bottles in countries such as Brazil, Chile, Eritrea, Germany, Mexico, Nigeria and parts of South Texas in the United States.

“Coca-Cola should walk the talk,” said Oceana Acting Vice President Atty. Rose-Liza Eisma-Osorio.

“It is trying to position itself as pro-environment by promoting its single-use PET bottles made with recycled content,” she said.

“While the company has launched public relations campaigns and built PETValue, a recycling plant it co-owns, these efforts fail to directly address its growing plastic footprint.”

The Oceana report projects that Coca-Cola’s plastic use could exceed 9.1 billion pounds (4.1 million metric tons) per year by 2030 if current trends continue.

This figure would represent a nearly 40% increase from 2018 and a 20% jump from the company’s most recently reported plastic use in 2023.

Oceana estimates that as much as 1.3 billion pounds (602,000 metric tons) of Coca-Cola’s annual plastic packaging could end up in oceans and waterways by 2030.

That amount of plastic could fill the stomachs of more than 18 million blue whales.

“Coca-Cola’s future is currently tied, like an albatross around its neck, to single-use plastic,” said Oceana Senior Vice President Matt Littlejohn.

“Single-use plastic is bad for oceans, bad for human health and bad for business,” he said.

“Recycling won’t solve the company’s out-of-control plastic problem. Reuse can.”

A peer-reviewed study published in Science found Coca-Cola to be the No. 1 source of branded plastic pollution globally.

In 2022, Coca-Cola Philippines announced that its PETValue facility could process 30,000 metric tons of plastic per year—around 2 billion bottles—with an output of 16,000 metric tons of recycled PET resin.

“That’s just a little more than half of the plastic containers used,” Osorio said.

Similar recycling limitations have been observed at Coca-Cola-affiliated plants in Mexico and South Africa, according to Oceana’s analysis of the company’s sustainability reports.

Meanwhile, a new European Union regulation that took effect in January 2025 requires at least 10% of beverages sold by 2030 to be in reusable packaging, with a target of 40% by 2040.

Oceana said this offers Coca-Cola and its European bottlers—Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) and Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company—a chance to lead or risk losing market share if they fail to comply.

Both CCEP and Coca-Cola HBC already operate refillable bottling systems in Germany, Nigeria and the Philippines.

According to Osorio, CCEP should be compelled to follow the EU regulation and prioritize reuse globally.

CCEP and Aboitiz Equity Ventures have been pursuing the acquisition of Coca-Cola Philippines since 2024.

Despite this, Coca-Cola has yet to prioritize reusable packaging in the Philippine market, Oceana said.

The group noted that a 10-percentage point increase in global reusable beverage sales by 2030 could eliminate over 1 trillion single-use plastic bottles and cups, based on a separate 2023 Oceana report.

Instead, Coca-Cola continues to focus on recycling, which Oceana argues has not proven effective in reducing plastic pollution at scale.

Coca-Cola has disputed some of Oceana’s findings and methodologies.

For the company’s full response, readers are directed to its official statement [linked in the original release].