Greenpeace activists blocked the entrance to the headquarters of Coca-Cola in the UK the 2.5-ton sculpture depicting seagulls, spewing plastic, and urged the company to do more to prevent contamination with plastics.

Campaign group said the sculpture, depicting an idyllic family beach scene, interrupted by the birds, choked by plastic, was designed in order to emphasize that the company is poisoning the environment.

In a report published on Monday, Greenpeace announced that Coca-Cola is the world's largest company producing soft drinks annually sells more than 100 billion plastic bottles. The report says that disposable plastic bottles account for almost 60% of the packaging produced by the company worldwide.

"We tried to find out the true size of the plastic pollution by the Coca-Cola company," - said Louisa Casson, member of "the Oceans for Greenpeace". "And we see that they are, instead of the reuse of packaging, increased the use of disposable plastic bottles over the past decade". Coca-Cola said that "disappointed" with Greenpeace's actions, and stated that this year she will publish a new "strategy for sustainable packaging."

Casson said that although "the company continues to encourage its customers to recycle", only 7% of Coca-Cola bottles on average are produced from recycled plastic. Casson noted that several brands of soft drinks are already using 100% recycled material in their bottles, including the British brand Ribena Suntory and 7Up from PepsiCo, which was sold in 100% recycled bottle "Eco-green" in 2011.

Coca-Cola is one of the few companies producing consumer goods, whose packaging is 100% recyclable," said the representative. "In the UK we have reduced the number of packaging products by 15% since 2007, and currently we use 25% recycled plastic in all our bottles. Globally, we continue to increase the use of recycled plastic in countries where this is feasible and permitted. "We recognize that marine debris is a global problem affecting the World's oceans," - said the representative of press-service.
sections: Society, World News, Accidents