"Woke" values boomerang on Coca-Cola

The headaches proved to be too much. As Dan McLaughlin reported on NRO last month, Coca-Cola was conspicuously absent from a list of companies that had met to discuss sanctions against Georgia. “It’s time to find common ground,” the company said in a statement. “In the end, we all want the same thing — free and fair elections.” Within days, it was announced that Gayton was leaving his post to become a “strategic consultant.” His replacement said the firm was “taking a pause” on controversial diversity initiatives. But controversy surrounding Coca-Cola isn’t going away. Liberals and conservatives are suddenly noticing that the same company that has been so sanctimonious in its “woke” warrior role hasn’t delivered on promises to clean up the glut of plastic waste it produces. It’s a problem. Putting plastics in landfills forever after they’ve been used a single time is wasteful and inefficient. Current recycling laws haven’t proven very effective in reducing waste. But until 2018, the U.S. was allowed to export the problem to China, which since the 1990s had eagerly accepted some 45 percent of the world’s plastic waste. Then China suddenly banned plastic waste, damaging the business model of traditional recycling centers and forcing a rethink of the problem.