grown into a bold multi-billion dollar global franchise with characters like catwoman and the joke a getting their own successful spin offs you're watching daily news coming up a day to be a documentary looking at plastics in the ocean we'll have more news headlines for you at the top of the hour and don't forget you can get all the latest information around the clock on our website that's state of new dot com i'm rebecca ritter's invent and thanks for watching. and for. filling which. video for you. anytime anywhere. in this.

film begins in hawaii in the middle of the pacific ocean in spite of the island's remote location it is also foreman victim to the epidemic of the 21st century plastic. plastic pollution is littering beaches and endangering certain species of animals no matter how remote or out of reach. but. in this new bar a tree in the north of the occupied ago scientists study marine animals not plastic at least in theory. no idea what that. but it's certainly plastic. and jessica perelman is

a biologist accustomed to finding plastic in fish stomachs she has started a very unique connection. casually often plastic bags. and this was all coiled up in the stomach when i found it had no idea what it wasn't all that it just. or did you react when in this installment i was shocked i started you know documenting it measuring it taking photos showing whoever else was around in the lab and we were kind of we were just there shocked to think that these fish are are really ingesting this i mean. to her disbelief the scientists has found plastic in an unlikely specimen known as the long fish. the younger said she was not expecting such a surprising discovery when she began this piece is.

fish live at a depth of about 200 to 400 meters and they're clearly coming in contact with plastic and it appears that plastic is is truly a deeper problem that we might have imagined. even swimming at these depths the long suit fish manages to swallow trivial plastic objects and i mean occasionally you might find a brand name such as this dishonored bottle label. what is this says is a label from a water bottle dishonored bottle clearly and found amongst the lancet fish stomach . this is a rather. bizarre design as a pretty well known. bottled water company. you know finding finding live all such as this in the stomachs makes it that easy to determine right you know where

it may have originated. this is always more to taste than just what you see. is just water in the bottle. in front sunny is one of the world's best selling water plants. and if you're not familiar with me you will certainly know the name of the group behind it the coca-cola company. everyone knows coca-cola but not everyone necessarily knows that the group is in china. dozens of other brands just sunny as part of the coca-cola company and sprite 2 there is also minute maid powerade and of course from one of the company's flagship brands. every year the group sells more than $120000000000.00 bottles across the globe that's almost 1000 bottles

a 2nd and this mass production is creating a devastating mass pollution. in january 2800 the multinational made a bold announcement by 2030 the brand is promising a world without waste. and it's james quincey coca-cola c.e.o. who is leading the movement. what we need to create is the circular economy we need to create value for that there's absolutely doable a world without waste thanks to unlimited plastic recycling but how reliable are the promises that this multinational can recycling really make this problem go away .

coca-cola and plastic have a long standing relationship and one that is full of surprises. to find out more we traveled to the united states to meet a man who is well informed on the subject he lives in this small house in the dinner. i got back nice and thank you nice to meet you yeah really welcome to the general coming out as it were going to 5 nights yeah well i have to drive it's good that i wanted to come on and yeah. but elmo is. historian. he's the author of a book about coca-cola a best seller it retraces the multinationals and time environmentalists strategy particularly from the sixty's on woods when plastic began to revolutionize consumer society we begin to see massive amounts of litter piling up around the

country coca-cola trying to respond to this wow we're getting blamed for all this aluminum waste all this ultimately plastic waste what do we do and one of the things they did was partner with a organization called keep america beautiful like. you here keep america beautiful you think like wow this sounds like an organization started by a bunch of kind of bearded environmentalist or at least that's what i thought. you know because you see this sign everywhere in the united states still a very present organization but it was founded surprisingly by the beverage brewing in canning and packaging industry is right the idea was that let's tell consumers there are the bad ones they're the litterbugs they're throwing us away industry shouldn't be blamed for all this waste. and so this native american looking

like a character from an old weston makes the keep america beautiful and huge that sense some people. are bright. was one species. and this guy throws in his car he throws the packaging waist down it is feet and then and this great camera man lifts the camera up towards the crying indians face and there's a tear in the snare and it comes on the screen and says. people start pollution people can stop it right and it's this message. consumers are the problem right not us industry but consumers are. since the success of this ad but in the us in the seventy's keep america beautiful has branched out. now there are organizations throughout the world

designed using the exact same model and always backed by the company with the red and white logo. to understand how coca-cola is recycling its reliable old consumer guru technique we have to go to their son i not to the chateau but to an event that is being held at the town. it is an important conference with several elected officials from all over europe and they're here to speak about the plan and then set their talents to conclude the meeting the guest of honor makes a speech this time it's the director of keep scotland beautiful an association partly financed by coca-cola like keep america beautiful and it seems derek

robertson is a fan of soda. and listen closely some of his slip ups are extremely telling. the public walking out on the television and saw it in all things by being there yes yes. yes it does here we use yeah it was exciting seeing it be more but it was blown to pieces out thinking at least something like there was no easy emphasizing individual rather than collective responsibility clearly nothing has changed since the advertisement of the native american crank. assume that you were drinking go to court this morning is the single use a lot of plastic and the problem today i passed a on plastic packaging has a very useful function in society and we need to we need to remember about the

fathers are very creative they are very very useful and they always like to form a function as important as hiring again as individuals dispose of these packages so their coca-cola for example one of those. packaging rightly want to be able to get a fiery safely amusing air what you don't want to say and then fire according to the head of an association which claims to fight against pollution coca-cola is supposedly the example to follow but does he admit to being financed by the american multinational we asked the question a few minutes later who is financing your targets or. an order from us or the tariff nobody ever. heard you were using here i don't know i mean i'm asking you these are legitimate questions. that my organization and scotland as my digital ok i'm fundamentally so tell you i'm committed to that will i volunteer my saying ok i want an option the scottish government was fortunate has power to use and they hire

experts and some companies and some companies like oracle but i only get one more than. a call center mcdonalds gregg's starbucks. most of records of big brand names. we had to insist since the sixty's coca-cola has been paving the way for other multinationals. but what if the soda giant really had decided to change a few months ago upon launching its program for a world without waste the company announced a set of very ambitious measures to resolve the plastic pollution problem. the solution is recycling the concept is simple collect the used bottles to make new ones out of them. coca-cola promises to put 50 percent recycled plastic in its bottles by 2030 and that's on

a global scale that. is absolutely doable there's a model there for the chinas and other parts of the world on how to create a. value out of plastic and get it we used to. of course that would be great news. but with all that we have learned about the companies strategies we wanted to check how often they actually keep their promises the american company has been promising to make bottles out of recycled plastic the years take the year 2008 for example in its report on sustainable development coca-cola announced that it wanted to put 25 percent recycled plastic in all of its bottles by 2015. for a long time we sought to find any trace of this in the report from 2015. the

company never clearly states whether or not that promise was kept we end up finding a single figure 12.4 percent at 1st glance it's easy to believe that this is the percentage of recycled plastic used by coca-cola but after taking a closer look 12.4 percent turns out to be the total percentage of recycled and renewable materials used the problem is that recycled and renewable plastic are 2 very different things. to decrypt the soda dunce jogen we arranged a meeting with an ngo that has been interested in the coca-cola group for a long time. and then bush is a specialist in ocean pollution and she's going to explain how the multinational twists words and statistics. their best to the plastic that coca-cola

calls are no ball is made from plants such as corn starch to visitors so they label it as plant bottle with a green bottle logo and a leaf. subprime but no matter the type of plastic the impact is the same whether it's you do plastic back to you in a. renewable plastic is essentially plastic made from a plant base but it's still plastic and therefore it's still bad for the environment that clears up the words now let's move on to the statistics so it's not 12.4 percent recycled plastic not 7 veges no it doesn't mean that we have written proof from coca-cola explaining it to us in an email that in reality they only used 7 percent recycled plastic sets in spite of the fact that their goal for 2015 was 25 percent that is edging closer to funding it does a difference and we are clearly very far from the target from the end years point of view coca-cola is recycling targets off 1st and foremost a marketing ploy to ensure that the consumer keeps buying their plastic bottles.

that use enormous amounts of plastic see recycling as a solution that they can sell to the public at the valar of. you know that the problem is that recycling is not the whole solution in fact as long as i think we have reached such a high level of complex plastic production that recycling cannot serve as the only solution it's just not possible says to the. coca-cola subtle statistical distortions are bad but the worst is yet to come. we uncovered something far worse in this envelope which contains dozens of letters and internal records from coca-cola these documents should have remained confidential but they were published anonymously on the internet a few months ago amidst the massive information this document caught our attention

it's dated from 2016 and signed by the coca-cola is a lot being manager in brussels. the bullet points are all the measures that europe could adopt but which do not coincide with coca-cola as interests. in the next we find carbon pricing restrictions on the usage of caffeine and eat you ban of advertising to children under $12.00. in other words anything that could lower the company's turnover figure on the right there's a circle entitled fightback these are all the european measures that coca-cola has decided to fight against for lobbying. and amongst the measures that coca-cola downright refuses we find increased collection and recycling targets.

in that fight back category we also discovered that the company wants to fight against the deposit system. this is one of the systems that is actually effective in combating pollution and the oldest in the game i'm well aware of this. and what is most ironic is that the returnable bottle is virtually how coca-cola began in the fifty's a bottle of coke was not always self by a pin up girl instead it was served in a dos bottle with a deposit. so once and the bottles would go back to the factory where they would be washed and real used this creates significantly less waste for the environment. the system worked very well but coke decided to put an end to it and use plastic instead completely disregarding one particular scientists recommendations. would

you like to know how coke decided to get rid of the returnable bottle the company has attempted to keep this story from getting out but we tracked down the only man able to tell it. today he is enjoying a discreet retirement in michigan in the united states and i'm going to go with richard my stimulus nearly thank you very much for going us 3 center thank you thank you let us. in this gentleman is called our send down a crook he was with the american environmentalists agency funny is he's also the 1st engineer in the world to investigate the ecological impact of coca-cola bottles . does a fair imitation that there are smaller. typical coke bottles about this from this big green translucent and all risk less. obvious

less. donny is referring to the beginning of the seventy's. that was when the. coca-cola company began to show an interest in plastic and to reach out to him. what they wanted to know is if you take into account all other environmental impacts on nature what is the best system the engineer works for over a year comparing the environmentalists impact of gloss bottles to that of any 1000000 cans and plastic bottles he costs analyzes the data makes graphs does complex calculations and he finally comes to this conclusion a glance at the table shows that the returnable glass bottle provided it makes 15 trips before it is discard is the ecological container proposed arks all so.

thanks to this report the coca-cola company knows full well at the start of the seventy's that returnable glass pollutes significantly less than plastic. but the company would never publicly shed this information. we put this together for them and they didn't publish it you know why. they were not interested in it have everything the public see the the total picture. why because they want to keep it in keep it quiet as to which way they were going to go. this is the new life way plastic tube i watch them slowly introducing the plastic bottles serialised that 10 eco plastic bottles play less than one glass bottle. with this advert for its new plastic bottle released in 1975 coca-cola varies ass

and honest report once and for all. it's life's tough it's easy to let. the american company never looks back coca-cola imposes its plastic bottle everywhere and then isn't the only one flooding the market it's a tidal wave from the eighty's onward plastic devastates beaches. and the 1st ecologists begin to protest against pollution. certain american states consider a forced return of the deposit. little do they know the company's immense power. coca-cola has been a significant force behind. fighting legislation that would put deposits on containers or put some kind of price on packaging waste

their newsletters that talk about all the successes that coca-cola is having around the country and it's almost like this great you know celebration letter every day every week we defeated this deposit system in this state and we defeated it here why do you think they were fighting so hard against deposit system want as the reason behind this because ultimately it means it means higher costs for them in the end this was a way of this was forcing them to internalize their pollution costs this was a market mechanism that's very smart to try and get industry to recognize that you have to deal with this way. let's recap in front of the cameras coca-cola c.e.o. promises on a world without waste that's our objective. but behind the scenes the american company is doing everything in its power to rescue any alternatives to plastic like the returnable bottle i think obviously. after months of negotiations with the

american multinational we have a meeting at the headquarters of coca-cola france for an interview. the vice president of the company michael goldsman has travelled from the united states to onslow questions will he has worked with coca-cola for 21 years he's in charge of global policy and environmental sustainability and he's a french speaking. good apostle test of what's the percentage of recycled plastic that coca-cola is currently putting in its bottles worldwide. global scale we still have a lot of work to do there at 7 percent well they're doing really really well because starting in 2008 the coca-cola group had been aiming to put 25 percent recycled plastic into that bottles by 2015 only it's now 2018 and went very far. from that target the proportion of recycled plastic is just 7 percent how and why did that happen. because it was very difficult and you're right we didn't reach our goals

we are aware of that and we know there's a margin for improving our performance with our new strategy we believe we can get there. early on it i thought we can agree you're very far away this is true that god i agree that we have a long way to go but we just launched this strategy in january and we're now only in july. so coca-cola has been working on a real policy or at least that's what you've been saying since january 28th seen on the m p cables we've been involved in collection and recycling systems in lots of countries we invested in france in 2012 so it's nothing new for us but yes our new strategy was launched in january 28th on the need to be discrete have you seen this document we yes but it doesn't reflect our current strategy is your sales it's a coca-cola document of your 2 old documents that i do years old from 2016 it's only 2 years old and that is our new strategy was launched in january of this

document reflects neither our current strategy know our current policies put it just in just one question so it's a fear christoper still your lobbyist in brussels yes so has she read made this chart that's changed yes it's changed give us the new chart i think she knows i don't have a chart to give you all those authorization so you've changed radically in 2 years you were fighting against this measure now you were all for it what was the turning point on a on communication or in contact with 3rd parties all the time we're communicating all the time and we are regularly real evaluate our policies know pretty t.k.o. we came to the decision that now is the time to really invest here all the actions we've carried out on the ground really demonstrate that we're sincere. that we're convinced that we can do it on a call thank you cancun affair. on the one hand you tell me yes we were so say but we didn't succeed and then on the other hand you have this strategy that should

have remained a secret. so i have doubts about your sincerity when you look at it as a way to evaluate what was i read whatever you're allowed to have doubts i ask both you and your public to look at our actions from now on look at what we plan to do and to use that to judge us and sarah take on myself. before judging their actions let's take a little trip to. the unforgettable time that i need. we travel to tanzania a country in east africa known for its incredible landscapes unspoiled beaches and the best so far is in africa. however what this promotional film does not specify is that tanzania is also the

incredible land of coca-cola. here everyone waits for red and white buses hoops alongside reginald white wolves and in the playgrounds children play around red and white the logo is everywhere sell off grow while you will stop noticing it. the good news is that in this country you can still find coke bottles made out of reusable glass but this will all soon be over. what the american company is doing in tanzania what it did in the united states 50 years ago replacing the glass bulb. those with plastic ones. guts what is going on behind these walls inside one of the 4 coca-cola factories in

tanzania. all guide is james muller the manager of the new production line a production line which only makes plastic bottles today they're producing bottles of phantom one of the numerous brands inside the coca-cola group. everything is automated and the equipment is brand new in the bottles of filled behind this window. and the code occupied by. the 3rd.

is the fact that the end of the book the book return in the long haul i've been. in $86340.00 bottles in 2 and a half hours that's a lot of plastic we did the calculations that 10 bottles a 2nd and that's only on mom production line in one of the factories in the country . 5 years ago this factory only fabricated glass bottles but on the day of our visit the production line for glass bottles is almost at a complete standstill. because there was still the there were. apart from plastic allergy view where you are. doing it but the trick apart from those who are given to you in terms of plus add to that don't

stop us that's a good feel good thing. and. the aesthetic perhaps but the choice of plastic is essentially unless you grasp what of they are to kill the very time of the book got full mood i don't care about the guitar i'm only kidding. what our guide is trying to say is that plastic doesn't seem to be a problem for the environment in tanzania so it's come back at business to everyone now take care of the business but stick to the politicos of the source that they defend being respectful. now that our factory visit is finished we can finally show you the wonders of the forgettable tanzania. unfit gettable town that only.

here are the real results of coca cola's famous recycling business and just by looking at the waste collectors we were told about it's clear that the recycling business is 1st and foremost a poverty economy. is 50 years old and has 3 children that she is raising by herself. just. to feed her family she collects plastic on the beach. but not the best i have forgotten most sought after items or models that look like this even the ones made out of hard plastic that they're always on the phone and but i collect a mix of bottles of it like that but i haven't found many yet i don't have.

evidentially death sunny is also leaving its mark in tanzania. by working 8 hours a day much i can collect up to 20 kilos a bottles at $250.00 shillings a keynote that's $0.10 she earns less than 2 year olds and that's on a good day. that limits the money i do this to earn a bit of money but don't believe for a 2nd because you can make a living from this that's going to still acting as i spend a lot of time doing it and as the past few years have been difficult the prices have dropped a lot and i need to find a good cigar that much. why the price is down for us because there's too much plastic. too much plastic and too many people like mata who collect empty bottles just disgraced by.

to bear witness to the most unsustainable side of this savage recycling economy we had. the largest tape in the land dar es salaam the economic capital of the country . every time a truck arrives to unload waste it's the same friends they. get. but not the forgotten little cup last exacts and plastic bottles like i might like these ones. if you will but. for these times of darkness the ones

that are clean are transparent and made out of hard plastic what was your board and where better but you really have to search for you because they're not easy to find you not sure got them. at h. the model moon has already spent 2 years rifling through waste in search of plastic that's more than enough to know that there is only one move to the recycling business here i'll need the strongest to make it. all go where you'd wish that were exhausted but we're prisoners of the system they impose the prizes and once one of us accept them we all have to go along with it or not. it's time to clean the windscreen and head elsewhere.

we go to meet the people who dictate the neuron the new market for recycled plastic . we find them in the suburbs of paris alone. these are the companies who buy plastic bottles this one is the largest in the country. before coming here we never would have been magine filming anything quite like this . a mountain of empty plastic bottles that you have to climb with 70 kilograms on your head.

at 1st we are almost fascinated by this blue mountain and the incessant coming and going of climbers all smaller than their loads. but then we talk to the workers. what's the biggest problem here is the sound. i swear it's the size that. you can't imagine how dirty it gets we have to gather everything with our bare hands. at the foot of the mountain these workers begin their final sorting session they put the colored bottles and plastic bags to one side. they put the clear bottles into large bags these bottles then go through these machines to

be reduced to small pieces before they can be recycled. and. until very recently the company exported this plastic to china the largest buyer of recycled. plastic in the world this is what the side manager is about to explain to us. yesterday when i was working and asking the correctors to tell you about this on the price went down a few months ago the way down the wise saying that the night tool by this time we've all. seen them back in the east bank will be ready to explode because there was no knowledge in moema case. in 2017 china announced that it no longer wanted to be the world's largest rubbish bin and that they would stop in porting used plastic from january 28th. this decision to the

collapse of the recycled plastic market our precarious business and an economy that rests entirely on the backs of the most vulnerable. and back at the coca-cola headquarters we speak to michael goldsman the vice president of the company again truth it will take us because i'd like to show you a few clips from the last country we filmed and take a look. this is tons of if you have been that way yes coca-cola 6 years ago coca-cola didn't sell a single plastic bottle in tanzania you only saw glass bottles they were on a deposit scheme and now the coca-cola factories in tanzania mainly making plastic bottles list why was that decision right. because no matter because of the consumer

count as i explained to you there are advantages and disadvantages to all types of packaging the consumer is also interested in the portability of a drink of the day i do know he was at that so it's the consumer's fault that you changed to plastic also matter it was our choice to respond to the demands of the consumer but that means that we also have a responsibility to put certain systems in place which we plan to do now to ensure these bottles are collected disable to visit you change from glass to plastic 6 years ago why didn't you put the collection system in place then what matters is that we're doing it now and in a fair i don't know what matters is that you didn't do it for 6 years best you changed to plastic without the necessary collection of recycling systems in place. today we have a new strategy and a new policy we want to build and create a circular economy the economy circular nobody the economy by circular economy us

centrally mean the recycling business as a whole business declares i want you to listen to a few statements want to show you what the recycling business currently looks like in tanzania. gaddy. i'm doing this to earn a bit of money but i don't believe for a 2nd that you can make a living from this. what do you think notebook can have value of all of the parts botting still have value after they've been used to upgrade a v. v cover where you when you see these clips do you not think coca-cola made a mistake in tanzania and zambia like looking at those clips and nobody does we're aware of the concern about plastic and we're currently putting a system in place that responds to that concern for you. can you tell me what you've actually put in place in tanzania as a motive you actually invested water to develop to stop seems like this. i haven't launched the project yet we have plans to put me on on i think also no investment.

we haven't invested anything yet and we're in the process of bringing the same model that we created in south africa to tanzania but we have to come back to it in a year to see what we put stablished on the ground vault coca-cola boasts of a world without waste those are the words of your c.e.o. do you really believe that a world without plastic is possible. you know when you don't see a world without plastic y.c. of the advantages of plastic it's portability it's carbon in a part of it we're conscious of the negative effects and that's why we need to put certain systems in place to manage it correctly aki format compress the system for sure i collect them all with coca-cola you can still taste the feeling in plastic bottles 0 waste does not mean 0 plastic and the promise of a circular economy is very far away to conclude our investigation a single statistic will suffice during the length of this film nearly 13000000

bottles of plastic will have been sold by the coca-cola group throughout the world . 'd german voices. south african growth. in the beethoven 1st 29 teams campus project. 2 worlds are united transit. through here.

welcome to the what is the gate here for details. for you to talk about the. very. clear. where is. your family scattered across the globe. to do list to play turning to the birds get them in the in the bush family from somalia live around the world. needed urgent assistance and. the family starts october on.

the back . of. the book. this is data being used live from the young people gather at the united nations for a dialogue on climate change the making comes a day off to millions took to the streets to rally against global warming and on the same day as volunteers around the world take on classic life also coming out to . small protests flare up in home home police fired tear gas and angry crowds cheering and now the weekend of pro-democracy protests that killed almost also fly as clashes resumed once know the trained security forces.