Greenwash Games? French public points finger at Coca-Cola over Olympics plastic waste

The Paris Olympics promised to be the most eco-friendly Games in history, reducing by half the amount of single-use plastic compared with London 2012.

French environmental groups, however, have criticised what they called a “bizarre” and “surreal” sight at certain venues’ drinks stands run by the main sponsor, Coca-Cola. Servers can be seen filling plastic reusable, so-called “eco-cups” from 50cl plastic bottles, amassing sacks of empty bottles for recycling.

Environmental campaigners said millions of plastic drink bottles being needlessly poured into millions of plastic cups was a double use of plastic and amounted to “greenwashing”.

Related: Plastic-bottle seats and wooden pools: can Paris deliver the leanest, greenest Olympics yet?

Coca-Cola, the American drinks giant which is one of the world’s top plastics producers, is a key Olympic sponsor and the only company supplying the 18 million drinks at the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, including Coke, Fanta and Sprite, which are sold to paying spectators and provided to athletes at the edge of the pitch.

The company said in a statement that it “supports the Games’ ambitions to reduce single-use plastic” and was committed to reducing waste. It said more than half of its drinks at the Olympics – 9.6 million – were “without single-use plastic” after it installed 700 soda fountains and brought in glass bottles.

However, the company said that, where soda fountains could not be installed, around 6.2 million drinks would be served to the public from recycled plastic bottles, which would be poured into reusable cups. Coca-Cola would keep the empty plastic bottles in order to ensure they were all recycled. The company said it could not set up soda fountains at all Games sites in order to meet the “best conditions for safety and food quality”, because of technical and logistical constraints.

At Games venues ranging from the water polo at the Aquatics Centre to tennis at Roland Garros, or athletics at the Stade de France, when spectators were given a plastic cup that could be returned to reclaim a €2 deposit, many were surprised to see it filled from a small plastic bottle.

Ingrid Vanhée, from the biodiversity association Noé, posted photos of plastic cups and bottles at the Stade de France saying she felt spectators were being “taken for idiots” and the company was trying to “win the gold medal for greenwashing”. The centrist MP Philippe Bolo posted from a handball event asking why, if reusable cups were being used, they were not being filled from fountains.

“This is not a good showcase for France or Coca-Cola,” the regional councillor and French Green party spokesperson Sophie Bussière said of the plastic bottles being poured into plastic cups.

“We really cannot keep ruining magnificent moments of collective celebration such as the Olympics with this type of behaviour of environmental delinquents.”

Marine Bonavita, project leader at the NGO Zero Waste France, said: “Taking a plastic bottle and pouring it into a plastic reusable cup is not our vision of zero plastic … it is not just shocking to NGOs but to citizens, and that’s why people are posting about it on social media.”

Before the Games, Zero Waste France, France Nature Environnement and other NGOs warned of “greenwashing” around drinks at the Games. Refreshments for many athletes will be served in sealed, single-use, recycled plastic bottles to guard against potential “sabotage doping” – to avoid drinks being spiked. This has required an exemption on public health grounds from France’s anti-waste law, which bans the distribution of single-use plastic bottles in venues open to the public. The NGOs have written to French government authorities to question that exemption and ask for full details but said they have not had an adequate response.

Questions are also being asked about the 13 million reusable plastic cups available to spectators at the Olympic and Paralympic Games – which can be returned for a €2 deposit.

Muriel Papin, of the association No Plastic in My Sea, said it was “surreal” to see drink from plastic bottles poured into plastic cups, describing it as “heresy, a waste of time and two plastics instead of one”. She said that because the reusable cups are eye-catchingly branded with Coca-Cola colours specific to the Paris Games, some spectators could see them as collectors’ items and not return them.

“If people don’t give back the reusable cups, if they take them home and put them in a cupboard or throw them in a bin in the street – it’s waste,” she said.

At the Stade de France, several people sipping from the reusable plastic cups they were handed at a Coca-Cola drink stand said they had not realised they could return them. Others said they would keep them as souvenirs. Rikke, a marketing manager from Denmark, watching the athletics, said: “I like the cup’s design, I’ve got Hard Rock drinking glasses at home and I’ll add this to them.”

Nathalie Gontard, a research director at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment and author of the book on plastic waste, Plastique, Le Grand Emballement, said pouring from plastic bottles into plastic cups was “a somewhat bizarre way to deal with the issue of plastic pollution”.

“The public is not stupid and everyone feels disappointed,” Gontard said, adding that there should have been drinks fountains across all venues and drinking glasses washed and reused on site. She said recycling plastic – which is energy-intensive and limited in how many times it can be done – “should only be a solution for absolutely essential plastics, which these are not”.