Drinks giant praises children for anti-plastic lobbying

A VICE-PRESIDENT of Coca-Cola has responded to children from a village school after they hand-delivered a presentation on plastic waste to its headquarters.

Olivia Smithyes, Henry Charlesworth and Freya Cox, from Frieth Primary School, made the journey to Uxbridge with their headteacher Martin Gosling and Lynda Brown from Greener Frieth in September.

The presentation comprised letters and drawings from pupils describing how plastic pollution made them feel and how they want the drinks giant to stop producing single-use plastic bottles by the time they grow up.

They have now received a letter from Julian Hunt, vice-president for public relations, communications and sustainability for Coca-Cola. He addressed the letter to the children which thanked them for their efforts.

The letter read: “Many thanks indeed for taking the time to pull together your World Without Waste project and for sharing it with us. My colleagues and I have read your work and we are really impressed by your impression and your passion for this topic and your ideas as to what needs to change.

“Like you, we really want to see an end to pollution and we want to see more packaging being recycled. Everywhere.

“We are working on these problems and are doing some good things but like you, we also know there is much, much more still to be done. Your project is truly inspirational.”

Mrs Brown led the project during the summer and contacted the Coca-Cola Europacific Partners in July to ask if they could hand-deliver the presentation.

The aim was to get Coca-Cola to make a video to encourage people not to drop litter and stop the production of single-use plastic bottles.

Mrs Brown said she did not expect the company to respond. She said: “The letter was a total surprise. I was absolutely delighted. The letter said how inspired they were by the children and their ideas and it shows that they did take them seriously and I also like to think that it does demonstrate how much a kid’s voice matters today.

“I never even expected to get the project to Coca-Cola. It made the whole exercise worthwhile for us. I think the school and the children are very proud of themselves.

“Coca-Cola was one of the first to introduce plastic bottles and they need to lead from the front and stop it being produced and used. If not, I fear that the world could end up being flooded with microplastics.”

Mrs Brown added: “For me, it’s about finding ways to enable children of today who are going to pick up this mess, that their voices really do matter. It’s sending messages to the people who make things happen and they need to pull their finger out and do whatever they can.”

Headteacher Martin Gosling presented the letter from Mr Hunt during an assembly to congratulate pupils on their hard work. He said: “I’m incredibly proud of the children. They’ve done a fantastic job and it’s great to see all their hard work recognised by Coca-Cola. The time it took for the pupils to research the effect of plastic pollution is just an example of the hard work the children put in to make our presentation so convincing.”

Lily-Mae Cooper, 10, who is in Year 6, said: “I wrote to them about how a huge number of animals is dying from plastic. They’re dying from cans because they have plastic to hold them together which can get around animals’ necks and suffocate them. I want to try and stop it from getting worse so the next generation has a nice world to live in.”

According to environmental campaign charity Greenpeace, Coca-Cola sells more than 100 billion single-use plastic bottles each year.

The company launched a World Without Waste campaign to make 100 per cent of its packaging recyclable globally by 2025, to use at least 50 per cent recycled material in its packaging and to collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one it sells by 2030.