Two health experts on Tuesday called for Olympic organisers to cut ties with major sponsor Coca-Cola, saying the current big money sponsorship deal allows the US company to “sportswash” unhealthy sugary drinks.
Meanwhile the Paris Olympics organising committee said on Tuesday it would meet its target to reduce single-use plastics by half compared to the 2012 London Games, despite plastic bottles by Coca-Cola being widely used on its sites.
Events at the Paris Games have been lined with advertising for the ubiquitous fizzy drinks of Coca-Cola, which has been sponsoring the Olympics since 1928.
But these sugary drinks “offer little or no nutritional value” and promoting such unhealthy products has no place in sport, according to Trish Cotter and Sandra Mullin of global health group Vital Strategies.
Sugary drinks are a “key driver” of a range of serious health problems affecting people across the world, including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, the pair wrote in a commentary in the journal BMJ Global Health.
Coca-Cola’s products also contribute to global plastic pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and use up a huge amount of water, they added.
“By continuing its association with Coca-Cola, the Olympic movement risks being complicit in intensifying a global epidemic of poor nutrition, environmental degradation and climate change,” the authors wrote.
“It’s time for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to cut ties with Coca-Cola in the interest of athletes, spectators and the planet.”
Coca-Cola did not respond to a request for comment.
Olympic staff have also been seen emptying plastic bottles into reusable cups — a practice some say runs counter to the Games’ pledge to be the greenest in history.
The Coca-Cola Company in May said nearly 10 out of 18 million refreshments — “more than half” of all those served to spectators — would be “without single-use plastic”.
But the Atlanta-based giant said it has had to use plastics due to “technical and logistical constraints”, despite Paris banning spectators from bringing single-use containers to Olympics sites.
At the site for the swimming events for example, glass bottles were being emptied into red-and-white cups, as noted by one AFP journalist.
While 700 drink fountains have been deployed across the competition, plastic bottles are being used where glass alternatives aren’t an option, said Georgina Grenon, the head of sustainability for the Paris Games.
In a press release on Friday Coca-Cola said it needed to adapt to each location and find the “best conditions for safety and food quality”, given technical and logistical constraints including water and electricity supplies, and storage space.
But this year’s Paris Games should still slash plastics use compared to the 2012 London Games, according to the organising committee.
“In our estimations of what will be served… we believe we will attain this 50 percent plastic single-use plastic reduction,” said Grenon.
The bottles poured into cups would not count towards this target, she added.
Environmental protection charity France Nature Environment (FNE) slammed the firm for “unjustified plastic pollution”, adding on Friday that the US company deserved the “gold medal for greenwashing” during the Olympics.
In 2020, Coca-Cola signed a joint deal worth a reported $3 billion to extend its sponsorship of the Olympics.
The partnership will last until at least 2032.
In 2022, the most recent data available, Coca-Cola, which is one of the world’s top plastics producers, manufactured 134 billion plastic bottles.
The beverage giant has set a target for all its bottles to be made from fully recycled plastic by 2030.
Of those currently filling rubbish bins at the Paris Games, Coca-Cola said around 6.2 million would be from this form, known as PET plastic.
Cotter and Mullin of Vital Strategies noted that last year Coca-Cola had more sports sponsorships than any other brand, including sportswear companies such as Nike.
“This strategy culminates in a gold medal opportunity to ‘sportswash’ an unhealthy product,” they wrote.
The World Health Organization has called for countries to tax sugar-sweetened beverages.
A petition launched ahead of the Games called “Kick Big Soda Out of Sport” has more than 109,000 signatures, and been backed by a range of public health organisations including the World Obesity Federation.
