Thing is, it's not that Coca-Cola is fighting such legislation (which would be reasonable), it's that recycling organizations are fighting such legislation... because they're being partially funded by Coca-Cola; and this conflict of interest isn't really appropriate.

deposit != more expensive.

same rule would apply to their competitors.

To their direct competitors, yes. To water from the faucet, home-made iced tea, and other substitute goods, the deposit does not apply equally.

Most Americans are afraid of tap water and have been brainwashed into thinking overpriced bottled water is better.

It does equal more expensive. Maybe not more expensive than Pepsi, but more expensive nonetheless.

Even if you assume you'll return 100% of them, which you won't, you have to value the time spent doing so.

And when you don't return 100%, which will be the case for most people, you eat a fee.

From the article:

>a bottle bill or container deposit law, which requires beverage companies to tack a charge onto the price of their drink to be refunded after it’s returned

So, yeah, it'd make their product more expensive at the time of purchase.

But "soda companies oppose recycling" is more sensational than "soda companies oppose adding a fee to the cost of their products".

Or the same when you returned your previous bottle or can while purchasing the next one. As a kid in Michigan during the late 70s, we scoured everywhere looking for cans we could return for the $0.10 (inflation adjusted $0.39 today) deposit. They were very difficult to find while they seemed to inhabit every ditch, roadside, and park in other states when visiting relatives. Obviously most cans were returned and the deposit refunded in Michigan. If you want to come up with a way of saying deposits increase the cost of the product, focus on the cost of administration for collecting and refunding deposits rather than the deposits themselves.

Deposit and return has been the standard way of achieving working reuse and recycling, pretty much forever. A century ago including Coca-Cola and all the milk, pop and beer bottlers. Just about everything that wants something back puts a deposit on it - otherwise people have no incentive to bother.

So the question becomes why do they oppose a fee that is unlikely to hurt overall sales? Ah, because they would have to do something with those returned bottles...

> because they would have to do something with those returned bottles...

No they don't. Here in Norway the bottles are compacted in the back of the reverse vending machine (usually from Tomra: https://www.tomra.com/nb-no/collection/reverse-vending) and sent directly to recycling. Bottles from all the different suppliers go together, none of them go back to the manufacturer of the content. And Coca-Cola has a deposit on bottles here and it is an entirely non-controversial idea.

Well have to do something in the sense of use some proportion of the recycled plastic. They have been consistent in briefing against deposit and reuse, and recycling, despite using millions of tons of plastic a year.

Moving to the system presently in Norway, and Germany I believe would be a huge step in the right direction. Sadly most governments appear afraid or unable to actually put accountability on corporations. Personally I'd require them to go back to deposit and reuse.

In Denmark, most bottles are as you describe, but glass returflaske are sent back to the brewery for refilling.

These are the biggest beer brands (Carlsberg etc) and the biggest soda brands (Coke etc), though the glass soda bottles are mostly seen in bars.

No, they aren't reusing the plastic coke bottles like in the old days. The downstream recycling isn't handled by Coca-Cola, so they don't have to do anything with those returned bottles.

The thing is, it does make the product more expensive. A ten cent deposit on a dollar product means a customer has pull $1.10 out of their pocket or CC balance. Customers don't think logically, and even if they do, they have to assign some monetary value to having to bring the bottle back, the chance that it may be discarded, etc.

It does hurt sales. If it didn't, the Coke would already be $1.10. (My exact numbers are fictitious, obviously, but the point is that Coke has already set their price at the number that maximizes profit.)

I'm not opposed to bottle deposits. They're highly effective. I just think it's disingenuous to act as if Coke here is opposed to recycling in general. They're not. They're opposed to the reduced sales that will come from higher prices.

That difference gives recycling advocates options. They can agree to spend some money on educating consumers, or making bottle returns easier, or anything else that might help ease the effect Coke is trying to avoid. They can probably find some common ground. There's no possible reason for Coke to be opposed to recycling in general.

>why do they oppose a fee that is unlikely to hurt overall sales?

Do you have any evidence for this?

It seems like any fee, even a small one, is going to impact sales when an item is priced as low as soda is. That's not to say their stance is justified or morally right. But framing it as primarily driven by opposition to recycling (which is a source of cheaper raw materials for them), as opposed to blanket opposition to any kind of fee being added to the price of their products, strikes me as misleading.

Right. It is more sensational. It's misleading though. It's not like Coke gives a flying fuck what happens to the plastic downstream. They aren't fighting recycling, they're fighting their product costing more. It's just coincidence that those are related. I was pointing out the article's bias.

Relations are important

"I didn't stop you from eating cake; I just wanted to eat it all myself"

"I don't support oppression in the East; I just want to have the products they sell"

No-one ever has a goal to do something bad. It is just a by-product of not giving a flying ^^

--

Yes, avoid biased views; but lets not also avoid escaping responsibility, even if by coincidence

Sure, but it is absolutely not helpful to reframe it in a negative way. Coca-Cola is fighting bottle deposits. And they're not evenfighting battle deposits, they are fighting the reduced sales that will result from bottle deposits. They aren't fighting recycling.

If you are somebody who wants recycling that is a very useful distinction because it gives you a place to find common ground. There is room for recycling advocates and Coca-Cola to work together, whereas if Coca-Cola were just opposed to recycling there would not be.

Ha ha, agreed that is a useful distinction. I confess to not reading the article...

But at some level I think only considering personal gain is negative

Otherwise we would say tobacco companies weren't negative to surpress evidence of cancer... Just because they want to sell cigarettes

Are coca-cola undermining the common ground? If they openly try to resolve these issues, I don't think anyone would call it negative

-- I want coca-cola to be their own main advocates for improvement