POLITICO
More than 100 Olympic athletes have called on beverage giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi to stop selling single-use plastic bottles and promote reusable products when they sponsor sports events.
The push comes ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic games which begin on July 26 and which Coca-Cola is sponsoring.
In a letter sent Wednesday to the CEOs of the Coca-Cola Company, its European subsidiary Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, and American rival PepsiCo, 102 current and former Olympians — 22 of which are competing in Paris — urge the companies to end plastic pollution “in the spirit of the Olympics and sport.”
Signatories include the French Olympic gold medalist windsurfer Charline Picon, Irish equestrian silver medalist Sarah Ennis and the American swimmer and two-time Olympic gold medalist Zach Apple, as well as athletes from Germany, Sweden, Poland, Nigeria and Mexico. Nine international sporting organizations also signed the letter.
The Games “will be the perfect opportunity for you and your companies to trigger a sea change in how the world understands packaging and light the torch for reuse,” the letter states.
Coca-Cola is the world’s top plastic polluter, according to environmental NGO Break Free from Plastics’s 2023 Brand Audit. In 2023 Paris’s mayor Anne Hidalgo announced a ban on single-use plastics at the games, but French media has since reported that an estimated 40 percent of drinks will come in plastic bottles.
