For health and environmental reasons, the Olympic Games are under pressure to provide up their Coca-Cola sponsorship after almost 100 years

Meanwhile, the Paris Olympic Organising Committee said on Tuesday it will meet its goal of halving using single-use plastic in comparison with the 2012 London Games, despite widespread use of Coca Cola plastic bottles at venues.

At the events throughout the Olympic Games in Paris, there was lots of promoting for the ever present soft drinks from Coca-Cola, which has sponsored the Olympic Games since 1928.

But these sugary drinks “offer little or no nutritional value” and promoting such unhealthy products has no place in sport, say Trish Cotter and Sandra Mullin of the worldwide health group Vital Strategies.

Sugary drinks are considered one of the “main causes” of a variety of serious health problems affecting people around the globe, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, the 2 researchers wrote in a commentary within the journal BMJ Global Health.

Coca-Cola products also contribute to global plastic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and devour enormous amounts of water, they added.

“By continuing its association with Coca-Cola, the Olympic movement risks becoming complicit in exacerbating a global epidemic of malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change,” the authors write.

“It is time for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to end its business relationship with Coca-Cola in the interests of athletes, spectators and the planet.”

Coca-Cola didn’t reply to a request for comment.

Olympic staff have also been observed emptying plastic bottles into reusable cups – a practice some say runs counter to the Games’ promise of being essentially the most environmentally friendly ever.

The Coca-Cola Company announced in May that almost 10 out of 18 million soft drinks – or “more than half” of all drinks served to spectators – would use “no single-use plastic.”

However, the Atlanta-based giant said it had to make use of plastic attributable to “technical and logistical constraints,” despite the fact that Paris has banned spectators from bringing single-use containers into the Olympic grounds.

At the venue for the swimming competitions, for instance, glass bottles were emptied into red and white cups, as an AFP journalist noted.

While 700 drinking fountains have been installed throughout the competition, plastic bottles shall be used where glass alternatives should not an option, says Georgina Grenon, head of sustainability on the Paris Games.

In a press release on Friday, Coca-Cola said the corporate needed to adapt to every location and find the “best conditions for safety and food quality” given technical and logistical constraints, including water and electricity supplies and cupboard space.

Nevertheless, the organizing committee says that plastic consumption shall be significantly reduced at this 12 months’s games in Paris in comparison with the 2012 games in London.

“Based on our estimates of what is served, we believe we will achieve that 50 percent reduction in single-use plastic,” Grenon said.

The bottles poured into cups wouldn’t count towards this goal, she added.

Environmental group France Nature Environment (FNE) accused the corporate of “unjustified plastic pollution” and added on Friday that the US company deserved the “gold medal for greenwashing” throughout the Olympic Games.

In 2020, Coca-Cola signed a joint deal reportedly price $3 billion to increase its sponsorship of the Olympic Games.

The partnership is anticipated to last at the least until 2032.

In 2022, in accordance with essentially the most recent data available, Coca-Cola, considered one of the world’s largest plastics producers, produced 134 billion plastic bottles.

The beverage giant has set itself the goal of constructing all of its bottles entirely from recycled plastic by 2030.

According to Coca-Cola, around 6.2 million of the rubbish cans currently being filled on the Olympic Games in Paris shall be manufactured from this way of plastic, referred to as PET.

Cotter and Mullin of Vital Strategies found that Coca-Cola had more sports sponsorships last 12 months than some other brand, including sportswear firms like Nike.

“This strategy culminates in a gold medal opportunity to ‘sportswash’ an unhealthy product,” they wrote.

The World Health Organization has called on countries to tax sugar-sweetened beverages.

A petition launched ahead of the Games entitled “Stop the Soda Industry from Sport” has collected greater than 109,000 signatures and is supported by a variety of public health organizations, including the World Obesity Federation.

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