out the coronavirus crisis. residents came out of their homes to join in with a nationwide round of applause to say thank you and in the capsule london moneyman securing the tower bridge were lit up in the blue color used by the national health service for its branding. this is g.w. news i'm learning and i must find more coming at the top of the hour and don't forget you can get all the latest news and information around the clock on our website that still w dot com. to . go beyond. the stories that matter to. come through. whatever it takes. to get the running down. to earth you know that. made for

mines. all 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 20th century plastic. plastic pollution is littering beaches and endangering certain species of animals no matter how remote or out of reach. but. in this in a 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 will find 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 did you react when you find 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 you know a shock to think that that these fish are are really ingesting this i mean. so how disbelief the scientists has found plastic in the non likely specimen known as the long fish.

the young was not expecting such a surprising discovery when she began how was this pieces. fish live at a depth of about 200 to 400 metres 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 sit fish manages to swallow trivial plastic objects and i mean occasionally you might find a brand name such as this dishonest bottle label. what is this so this is a label from a water bottle dishonored bottle clearly and found amongst the lancet fish stomach . this is a. design design is a pretty well known. bottled water company. you know finding finding level

such as this in the stomachs makes it that easy to determine where you know where it may have originated. this is always more to things than just what you see. is just water in the bottle. in fact sonny is one of the world's best selling water brands. 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 does only as part of the coca-cola company and sprite 2 there is also a minute made 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 like 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 is 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 genea . i got back nice a few nice to meet you yeah really welcome to the virginia coming out of the series of the 5. yeah i down when i have to drive was good that i wanted to run out yeah. but elmo is. historian. he's the author of a book about coca-cola a best seller it retraces the multi-nationals anti environmentalists strategy

particularly from the sixty's on woods when plastic began to revolutionize consumer society will begin as a massive amounts of litter piling up around the country. coca-cola tried 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. 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 industries right the idea was that let's tell consumers there are the bad ones they're the litterbug 30 throwing us away industry should be

blamed for all of 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. as 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 of. consumers are the problem right not us industry but consumers are.

since the success of this ad that 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 guilt 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. i have to be clear walking out on the television and saw the thing about me getting their hair gets up. as it does here we do yeah it was fire seems to be momentous blow a few things out thinking at least that if i. was if you keep emphasizing individual rather than collective responsibility clearly nothing has changed since the advertisement of the native american prime. assume that you were drinking coca-cola this morning is no single use bottled plastic of the problem

today. plaster and plastic packaging has a very useful function in society and we need to we need to remember that the fathers are very feats of the very very useful and they always they perform a function a supporter is hiring again as individuals dispose of these packages so there coca-cola for example one of those. packaging what they want to be ready to get a fiery safely i mean here's a fair point i 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. over some us are the targets of nobody. who would you want isn't here i don't know i mean i'm asking you these are left of interest question. my organization and scotland as my digital ok i'm

fundamentally so tame committed to that will i volunteer my saying ok i want to upset the scottish government was torturing us policies and they hired out experts and some companies and some companies and my partner and i only got one more than. a call center mcdonald's regs starbucks and 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 for coca-cola the solution is recycling and the concept is simple to collect 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 company's 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 begins 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 giants jogen we arranged a meeting with an ngo that has been interested in the coca-cola group for a long time. and bush is a specialist in ocean pollution and she's going to explain how the multinational

twists words and statistics. your best to the plastic that coca-cola calls or new a bowl is made from plants such as corn starch of the visitors so they label it as a plant pot with a green bottle logo and a leaf. supply 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 7 beds of no it doesn't mean that we have written proof from coca-cola explaining to us in an e-mail that in reality they only used 7 percent recycled plastic sets in spite of the fact that their goal for 2015 was 25 percent of that decision could object a fundamental difference and we are clearly very far from the target from the

n.g.'s point of view coca-cola is recycling targets offers them foremost a market didn't ploy to ensure that the consumer keeps buying their plastic bottles . companies 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. i thought 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 emmett's the massive information this document caught our attention it's dated from 2016 and signed by the coca cola's lobbying manager in brussels. the bullet points are all the measures that europe could adopt but which do not coincide with coca cola's 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 fight back these are all the european measures that coca-cola has decided to fight against through 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 date the bottles would go back to the factory where they would be washed and reused this creates significantly less waste that the

environment. the system worked very well but coke decided to put an end to it and use plastic instead completely disregarding one particular sunday he is enjoying a discreet retirement in michigan in the united states and i'm going to go over there to meet you nice to be in syria thank you very much for coming us precentor thank you thank you let us. in this gentleman is called our send down a he what of the american environmentalists agency from many is he's also the 1st engineer in the world to investigate the ecological impact of coca-cola bottles. how does a fair imitation that there are smaller. typical quote battles about this this big green translucent always glass. always flawless. and donna is referring to the beginning of the 70s. 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 and all other and environmental impacts on nature what is the best system the engineer over here. impairing the environmentalists impact of glass 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 for parkes all so. thanks to this report the coca-cola company knows full well at the start of the seventy's that return a bull glass pollutes significantly less than plastic. but the company would never

publicly shadd this information. we put this together for them and they didn't publish it you know why. they were not interested in in 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 a new life wait plastic to lease a golf i watch them slowly introducing the plastic bottles serialised that 10 eco plastic bottles playlist and one last question. with this advert for its new plastic bottle released in 1975 coca-cola various aston dani's report once and for all. its 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 on would plastic devastates beaches. and the 1st ecologists begin to protest against pollution. certain american states consider a 4th to turn at the deposit. little do they know the company's immense pella. 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 there are 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 a world without waste that's our objective. but behind the scenes the american company is doing everything in its power to less to any alternatives to plastic like the return of a 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

on so how 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 speaker. ketoconazole test of what's the percentage of recycled plastic that coca-cola is currently putting in its bottles worldwide. lobel scale we still have a lot of work to do we are accepting percent didn't really go because dosing in 2008 of the coca-cola group had been aiming to put 25 percent recycled plastic into that bottles by 2015 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 that we can

get there is you've. got 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 that 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 on the employee cable that 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 you do years old from 201622 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 is the fear christoper still your lobbyist in brussels yes so has

she repaid this trot that's changed yes it's changed to give us the new chart 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 back then now you were all for it what was the turning point on a on communique we're 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 euro the actions we've carried out on the ground really demonstrate that we're sincere. that we're convinced that one can do it on a call that q. konkona fair. on the one hand you tell me yes we were us and said 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 had whatever you're allowed to have doubt 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 t. . before judging their actions let's take a little trip to. the unforgettable tand only. 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 wools and in the playgrounds children play around red and white the logo is everywhere so after a while you almost stopped noticing it like. 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. that is what is going on behind these walls inside one of the 4 coca-cola factories in tanzania.

all guide is james mother 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 the bottles of filled behind this window. and the call up by. the 3rd. is the 6300 but the book bag returns in the long haul.

of the. $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 they want to kill the think there will. apart from plastic g.b.u. where you are. doing it but up for it apart from those who are even moved into full force it to set himself up that's good to have a good 6 pack on. the aesthetic perhaps but the choice of plastic is

essentially unless you glass bottle down to kill the very time of the book. but for me i don't care about the guitar i'm going to carry this push of. 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 to business to see everyone now take care of the business bus pick to fill the political bus to the source of a difference in the cycle. now that our factory visit is finished we can find and they show you the wonders of the forgettable tanzania. unforgettable time that only. here are the real results of coca-cola this 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 no the best i have also for the most sought after i don't miss our models that look like this are the ones made out of hard plastic that they're always on the phone and but i collect a mix of both of us a little bit like that but i haven't found many yet i don't have. evidentially death sonny is also leaving its mark in tanzania. by working 8 hours

a day much i can collect up to 20 kilos of bottles at $250.00 shillings a keynote that's $0.10 she earns less than $2000000.00 writers and that's on a good day. to miss the money i do this to earn a bit of money by going to don't believe for a 2nd that you can make a living from it and do still that is 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 want to get to see a government. 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 to scrape by.

to bear witness to the most unsustainable side of this savage recycling economy we had. the largest tape in the land doris salaam the economic capital of the country . every time a truck arrives to unload waste it's the same friends a. cigarette . but not the full go look up plastic bags and plastic bottles like i might like these ones. it's all but it's not for these types of artists the ones that are clean and transparent and made out of hard plastic what was your board and where better but you really have to search or you know because they're not easy to find

they 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 moved to the recycling business here i'll need the strongest to make it. could all go where it was that we're exhausted but we're prisoners of the system to be impose the prices 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 door on the new market for recycled plastic.

we find them in the suburbs of paris. these are the companies who buy plastic bottles this one is the largest in the country. before coming here we never would have imagined 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 sound. you can't imagine how dirty it catch we have to gather everything with our bare hands. at the foot of the mountain these workers begin their final sorting sessions 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. i was working and asking for collectors 10 you're bound to tell me your price went down a few months ago the way down lies and i did my tool by this one i was told. to sit him back in the east bank all ready to explode because there was no knowledge you know my kid. 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 led to the collapse of the recycled plastic market our precarious business and an economy that rests entirely on the backs of the most vulnerable.

back at the coca-cola headquarters we speak to michael goldsman the vice president of the company again. travel will take it because i'd like to show you a few clips from the last country we filmed and take a look. this is terms and they have you ever been 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 they had to know the coca-cola factories in tanzania mainly making caustic bottles list why was that decision might as well. no matter the cause 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 b. they do dorothy was at that so it's the consumers fault that you changed the 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 at this table to you that 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 if you change to plastic without the necessary collection and recycling systems in place. today we have a new strategy a new policy we want to build and create a circular economy economy circular the body of the economy by circular economy us centrally mean the recycling business as a whole. 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. can have all of that impact bottle still have value after they've been used a trader v. v cover where you when you see these clips do you not think coca-cola made a mistake in tanzania and. like looking at various 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 in water to be developed to stop scenes like this. haven't launched the project yet we have plans to support me on that it also no investment. we haven't invested in i think yet we're in the process of bringing the same model that we created in south africa to tanzania me but we have to come back

to it in a year to see what we put stablished on the ground 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 why see 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 us 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 left been sold by the coca-cola group throughout the world.

europe. what unites. us what defines. trojan horse. what binds the continent together. the answers and stories of plunging the. spotlight on people. some. 30 minutes d.w.m. . until africa. in the morning sees a student in the afternoon a reporter you learn to tara is taking

a camera workshop. in her free time she goes out and reports on ecological issues in her home country south africa it makes new people aware and it makes them one it's to take initiative and join us eco africa. 90 minutes on the d w. this

is the w.'s line from the united states confab small coronavirus cases than any other country including china new york city and presented stretching the city's health care system to the limit most people have died health care workers are short of critical supplies and this is likely to get worse also on the program. when you really need it and.