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Kids Want Wiser Use of Plastic
 Adam Itkoff talks with Maleka Fruean in Rittenhouse Square. |
Jewish Exponent Staff
Bucks County
See more photos of the campers in action!
Nine campers from Camp Galil, a Habonim Dror camp in Ottsville, Bucks County, took to Rittenhouse Square last week to protest what they say is Coca-Cola's limited use of recycled plastic in its bottles.
Armed with a life-size replica of a Coke bottle made of wire and filled with 2-liter bottles of soda and leaflets, the children make their case against the beverage manufacturer. Their goal was to encourage others to call Coca-Cola and complain.
According to the camp and groups like the GrassRoots Recycling Network, the soda manufacturer promised 10 years ago that it would use 25 percent of recycled plastic in the construction of its soda bottles. The groups say Coke has not made good on that promise.
Trey Paris, Manager of Global Communications at Coca-Cola, said that the company did not break any promise. "In 1991 we were the first soft-drink company to test recycled content in plastic bottles. While we were unable to sustain this breakthrough technology, we never broke a promise, and we continued to test and develop new technologies in recycled plastic."
"Over the last eight years we've invested over $15 million in that technology and, as a result, are using recycled-content plastic in billions of bottles today."
During the protest in Rittenhouse Square, however, the children discovered that not everyone is concerned about recycling.
"Some people were really nice. . . and some people took [the leaflet] and later dumped it," said 11 year-old Sophia Bernstein.
Noni Teutsch, 12, said, "Some people didn't even let me give them a flier, and said 'Why you care? I don't.'
"And some promised to call, and then when I turned around, they threw out the flyer. It was pretty upsetting because they seemed to care, and it's really sad that people don't," said Teutsch.
According to Orli Cotel, education director at Camp Galil and a student at Washington University in St. Louis, the youngsters took aim at Coke because it is being targeting by other groups. (The GrassRoots Recycling Network says that Coca-Cola is the largest supplier of soft drinks; as such, if it uses more recycled plastic than other companies, beverage rivals may follow suit. )
Another reason for targeting Coke, said Cotel, is because "kids like their products and buy a lot of it. If you had kids saying 'I like Coca-Cola products a lot, but I'm not going to buy them,' the company sees [that] as a very big deal, and a potential threat."
The protest is part of the camp's social justice/tikkun olam program.
"Tikkun olam is very important to us," said Cotel. "We wanted to teach the kids the activist side of tikkun olam --that it doesn't just mean helping at a soup kitchen, but to get to the systemic base of the problem and help any way they can."
But their campaign against Coke seems misguided, stressed Paris, a spokesman for the soft-drink giant.
"The fact is, they have been given some erroneous information about our use of recycled-content plastic and our packaging, and for that matter, our overall commitment to recycling and recycled-content usage," he said.
He noted that 25 percent of the company's plastic bottles will contain 10 percent recycled plastic this year. "And we intend to use more based on market conditions and emerging technologies, "he said.
Paris later added that, "we're the only carbonated soft-drinks company using recycled plastic, and yet we're being singled out rather misappropriately. Sometimes, that's the price you pay for leadership."
For their part, the campers were expected to take their life size Coke replica this week to the company's regional office in New York.
| GRRN's 'Kid's Recycle' Project contains links and descriptions originally compiled by Roger Guttentag, who writes the Recycling in Cyberspace Column for the monthly periodical Resource Recycling. |
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