Coca-Cola Company (The)

Coca-Cola has been the subject of multiple legal actions and public allegations concerning misleading environmental claims, a practice commonly known as greenwashing. In September 2024, a dismissed false advertising lawsuit against the company was revived by a federal appeals court; the complaint specifically accused Coca-Cola of greenwashing by marketing its plastic bottles as “100% recycled” when they contained material from non-recycled sources. This followed a 2023 complaint from consumer bodies in multiple countries alleging the company made misleading claims about plastic water bottles being “100% recycled.”

This pattern extends to the company’s broader public communications strategy. A 2025 analysis by philosophers cited Coca-Cola as a case study in how corporations use factual research to mislead the public, arguing the company’s goal was “distraction”—to divert attention from the environmental impact of its single-use plastic bottles by funding studies on recycling. This activity is contemporaneous with ongoing litigation, such as an October 2024 lawsuit filed by Los Angeles County against Coca-Cola for its significant role in plastic pollution.

Widely accused of depleting local water resources in multiple communities, leading to scarcity and conflict.

The Coca-Cola Company has faced persistent, documented allegations of child labor in its sugar supply chain for decades. In 2004, Human Rights Watch exposed that Coca-Cola’s sugar supplier in El Salvador used sugarcane harvested by children, a finding corroborated by film footage from 2007. Investigations by the company itself, including its "Review of Child Labour, Forced Labour and Land Rights," acknowledge the systemic risk, noting that child labor is rampant in sugarcane cultivation in key sourcing regions like El Salvador, where it forms an important part of production.

While Coca-Cola has public policies prohibiting child labor and states that forced and child labor are not used in its business or supply chains, these declarations exist alongside ongoing evidence of the practice in its agricultural supply base. The company’s reliance on commodity sugarcane, a crop historically linked to hazardous child labor in multiple countries, creates an inherent and recurring exposure. Its commitments are thus juxtaposed with a supply chain reality where child labor violations have been repeatedly identified.

Coca-Cola spent $4.93 million on federal lobbying in 2024 and $3.48 million through the first half of 2025, according to OpenSecrets filings. The company's PAC contributed $1.37 million to candidates in the 2024 election cycle. These figures represent only Coca-Cola's direct federal expenditures and exclude the company's substantial funding of the American Beverage Association, which acts as the industry's primary political vehicle at the state and local level.

The state-level spending is where scale becomes clear. In 2018 Coca-Cola contributed nearly half of the more than $20 million raised by the "Yes! To Affordable Groceries" coalition to pass Washington state's Initiative 1634, which preempted local governments from enacting new taxes on groceries including sugared beverages. In California, the ABA coerced state legislators into passing a soda tax preemption bill through 2030 by threatening to place a draconian supermajority tax initiative on the November ballot if legislators refused. Coca-Cola spent $5.4 million on federal lobbying in 2018 alone during the peak of these campaigns. Similar preemption efforts succeeded in Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania, where beverage industry lobbyists inserted language into unrelated legislation blocking local sugar-sweetened beverage taxes.

Break Free From Plastic Brand Audit 2023 (Feb 2024) — Rank #1 global plastic polluter for 6th consecutive year; 33,820 branded plastic items found across 40 of 41 countries audited; top rank every year since BFFP inception 2018. Science Advances (Cowger 2024): Coca-Cola accounts for ~11% of all globally branded plastic pollution across 84 countries 2018–2022.