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Today, The Coca-Cola Company reported its 2022 and fourth quarter earnings, revealing significant growth for the popular beverage maker. The company’s reported $43.0 billion–11% growth–net revenue in 2022 adds to the post-pandemic rebound shown by the sector and numerous industries, and come at a time when inflation in the U.S. and abroad remains high.

In response, Defend Our Health’s Senior Market Campaigner, Maya Rommwatt, said: 

“The world’s biggest plastic polluter continues to put profit over people and the planet by producing toxic plastic bottles that harm communities and the climate at every step of its manufacturing process. While the biggest shareholders and the CEO of The Coca-Cola Company are probably pleased as punch with the company’s growth in 2022, the people most exposed to toxic chemicals–from fenceline communities to consumers– are made to suffer in order to generate those profits. And our last chance at avoiding climate chaos is in jeopardy thanks in part to Coke’s ballooning profits, as 99% of plastic is made from oil and gas.

The damage wrought by Coca-Cola’s plastic bottle addiction is well-known once the bottles become waste, but the plastic-choked oceans are only the tip of the iceberg. Consumers are exposed to a cocktail of potentially dangerous chemicals that are shown to migrate out of the bottle into the drink contained, including the carcinogens antimony and cobalt. And before the bottles reach consumers, the plastic precursor chemicals move through a number of communities where they’re chemically altered to ultimately become a plastic bottle filled with soda, juice, or water. Every one of those communities is burdened by cancer-causing toxic chemical pollution as a result, including 1,4-dioxane and ethylene oxide, and many are low income or communities of color. But the dangerous exposure doesn’t begin with chemical manufacturing. Each bottle starts as either tar sands oil that threatens Indigenous communities in Alberta and the Northwest Territories, or as fracked gas in the Permian Basin where rural communities struggle with air and water pollution from the shale gas boom. 

From the moment a plastic Coke bottle is made, it begins creating a toxic chemical burden in communities that are hardest-hit by pollution. The more Coke grows, the more new plastic it uses, and the more the climate is destabilized and communities and consumers are exposed to a toxic cocktail of chemical exposures. It’s time for The Coca-Cola Company to stop putting profits above all else, if it wants to be taken seriously as a sustainable company and climate leader.”