As a global company regularly caught in the spotlight due to its questionable sustainability efforts, Coca-Cola faced increasing pressure from green campaigners last year when news spread that they were guilty of producing 100 billion throwaway plastic bottles every year. Coca-Cola’s pledge to recycle every bottle by 2030 has failed to counter the prevailing negative sentiment around the brand. By tweeting that Coca-Cola’s trade association “does nothing on climate and supports the US chamber, a huge enemy of climate action”, US senator for Rhode-Island, Sheldon Whitehouse, made the situation go from bad to worse. The remark highlighted the discrepancy between Coca Cola’s public climate program and the brand’s activities in the political realm. With this perfect example of how social media can expose double standards without any filters, it’s clearly more important than ever to answer public concerns and follow through with a long-term sustainable strategy.

Coca-Cola claims that for every drop the company uses, it gives one back. But “every drop” includes only what goes into the bottle. The company does not count water in its supply chain — including the water-guzzling sugar crop — in its “every drop” math. In a report, Coca-Cola acknowledged that the water used in production was “a very small percentage of the total water footprint.” In 2008, Coca-Cola conducted an assessment of a factory and found it took 35 liters of water to make every half-liter of Coke. The researcher who worked on that assessment says the company pressured him to adopt a “net green” accounting method that would have lowered the water footprint of its agricultural supply chain. The company has been criticized for the science behind elements of its replenishment program that “offset” its water use. Coca-Cola gives millions of dollars to environmental groups that assess the efficacy of its water replenishment plans. Coca-Cola pledged to become “a truly water-sustainable business on a global scale” in 2007. Eleven years later, by the standards of the 2008 assessment, the company still has nearly 99 percent of its water footprint to go.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the clear plastic resin commonly used to make beverage bottles and food containers. Though made from hydrocarbons — naturally occurring compounds sourced from non-renewable resources, primarily oil — if left to break down outside, PET can take hundreds of years to degrade. But because PET is of the polyester family it can be easily recycled into new bottles or other consumer products such as clothing and carpeting. As the world’s second largest consumer of PET bottles and the biggest consumer of Coca Cola products, (which increasingly includes bottled water), the average Mexican citizen drinks and discards two bottles per day. That equals nearly six kilograms of PET bottles per capita annually, contributing to a yearly national total of about 750,000 tons of PET. A recent survey found that, for the typical Mexican household, sodas constitute the third largest expense, after tortillas and milk.

Research indicates that nearly half of the plastic that flows into the world’s oceans each year — an estimated 8 million metric tons — escapes from waste streams in just five fast-growing economies in Asia. The extent of plastic pollution in Indonesia, one of the five targeted countries where around 130,000 tons of plastic and solid waste are produced every day, was recently highlighted in a short video posted on YouTube by British diver Rich Horner. The video, which was filmed at Manta Point, a mere 20 km away from Bali, shows a submerged Horner surrounded by innumerable plastic bags, bottles, cups, sachets, straws and other items, which appear to drastically outnumber the fish and other marine life in the area. “Solving the problem of ocean-bound plastics will require significant investment and partnership from brands and supply chain leaders. Partnership with our coalition of companies who have operations in these markets and with PEMSEA, a regional intergovernmental body with local knowledge and experience in SE Asia will help us bring in additional investors, understand the local market and supply chain dynamics and develop an investment strategy that unlocks the key bottlenecks holding back the recycling system in SE Asia and India,” said Rob Kaplan, Managing Director of Closed Loop Partners.

There’s a financial incentive for companies to boost recycling. Major brands are losing out on $11.4bn in recycling revenue each year, according to a recent study by advocacy groups the Natural Resources Defense Council and As You Sow. Corporations such as Walmart have also set ambitious goals to use more recycled materials in their packaging, which they won’t be able to achieve if the supply of recycled content lags. “Significantly increasing recycling of products and packaging is a global challenge requiring large-scale investment in infrastructure, public-private collaboration, and a fundamental shift in public behavior,” said Kathleen McLaughlin, senior vice president of sustainability at Walmart.

Greenpeace said Coca-Cola should focus on reducing, not recycling, waste.Coca Cola announced its "World Without Waste" campaign by acknowledging that food and drink companies were responsible for much of the rise in litter on streets, beaches and in the oceans worldwide. /**/ (function() { if (window.bbcdotcom && bbcdotcom.adverts && bbcdotcom.adverts.slotAsync) { bbcdotcom.adverts.slotAsync('mpu', [1,2,3]); } })(); /**/ "The world has a packaging problem - and, like all companies, we have a responsibility to help solve it," Coca-Cola chief executive James Quincey said in a statement.

Coca-Cola is one of many major companies that has made sweeping sustainability promises. Waste-reduction commitments are a way for brands to show customers, who are increasingly concerned about the environment, that they care, and to share that message with employees. Plus, recycling offers companies a way to take more control of their supply chains and avoid potentially volatile raw materials markets. But recycling commitments are difficult to pull off. For Coca-Cola to fulfill its promises, the beverage company needs to make its packages fully recyclable, which it aims to do by 2025. It also has to persuade people to recycle correctly, and it would help if Coke customers live in places with sufficient recycling infrastructure. If Coca-Cola wants to keep its promise, it needs to help fix recycling systems in the communities it serves.

The company has committed to making its bottles and cans out of at least 50% recycled material in the next 11 years. To do that, Coca-Cola (KO) needs to be able to capture recycled materials and use them to make new packaging That's a big undertaking, especially considering the company produced over 3 million tons of plastic packaging in 2017, according to a new report compiled by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which works with companies to reduce waste.

, fans could step inside their beloved Kong Studio and be part of the Gorillaz world surrounded by recognisable memorabilia

During the day the studio was the ultimate Gorillaz fan experience.

The result of an epic collaboration between animated band Gorillaz and energy provider E.ON,

, E.ON needed to make people feel like no energy company had made them feel before and this required a completely unprecedented approach

Although the innovative changes E.ON had made were crucial for its business, for millions of energy users across Europe they couldn’t have been less interesting. We knew that the brand had worthwhile stories to tell—smart, innovative products that were genuinely shaping a better future—but if the storyteller was a conventional energy company, delivering them through traditional channels, the spark died and interest waned.

We Got the Power becomes a film full of quirks, laugh-out-loud scenes and immaculate in-scene filming that sure makes us wish we could throw equally groovy shapes on the dancefloor - we see you, flawless spinning dolls and booty-shaking bear.

An epic new film by E.ON is a solar-powered miniature doll

grows in scale to a Vegas-

the short film is a feat of prop coordination, timing and in-camera filmmaking.

E.ON and Gorillaz Collaborate to Create Solar Powered Miniature Doll Showcase Extravaganza

As an energy provider, this strategy might be scoffed at by some as idealistic, but to give due credit the brand putting its money where its marketing is

impressive given it was 2am!