Is Coca-Cola Trying To Save The World With Kitsch?

Disposing of plastics in an environmentally friendly way is something we as humans are pretty terrible at. There are literally islands of floating plastic in the oceans thanks to us, and it's killing off lots of wildlife. So the question is "What do we do about it?"

Coca-Cola, who sells not only delicious sugary drinks, but also the plastic bottles they come in, by the millions, is launching a forward-thinking campaign in Asia that aims to get people to repurpose their empty Coke bottles instead of chucking them.
With the help of international advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather, Coca-Cola will begin giving customers in Vietnam an upcycling kit when they purchase a Coke that allows to convert the empty bottle into a useful product by replacing the cap with one of the various mods included the kit. So now your empty Coke can be a water gun, a magic marker, a spritzer, a barbell, a nightlight, a bubble-blower, a pencil sharpener, and God knows what else. Pretty cool, right? Sounds like a solid, environmental initiative.

Except for one thing: None of these add-ons actually manufacture Coke. So if you want to keep drinking it, you need to keep buying more plastic bottles of it. Now the next sixteen bottles can be turned into other things, that's how many custom caps are in the kit, but what about after that? I mean, how many pencil sharpeners and night lights do you really need compared to how many bottles of Coke you'll buy in the next year?

Even in Asia, where this campaign is happening, and where recycling materials is much more of a cultural activity, it still doesn't diminish the amount of bottles that will be produced strictly for the sale of Coke. Help me out guys -- what do you think? Is this new initiative really designed to help clean up the planet or is it just a clever PR move by Coke to raise awareness and appear more environmentally friendly than they really are?

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