Capri-Sun: The final straw
Capri-Sun faces a PR storm as it petitions to bring back recyclable plastic straws, raising questions about sustainability and consumer priorities. Is this a bold move or a PR fail?
Every now and then a business story hits the news that makes PR professionals stare at their respective screens in disbelief and cry out: ‘they did what?’
It has happened this week with drinks company Capri-Sun, which seems to have utterly misjudged the pulse of today’s consumers, business environment and, well, the things that matter more than their bottom line.
What’s the story?
The household brand for many families, which has been selling its drinks pouches since 1969, is asking its ‘Capri-Sun Fans’ to add their signatures to a petition to ‘bring back recyclable plastic straws for Capri-Sun: Make recycling easier for everyone!’
Once they hit one million signatures, the firm plans to take it to the European Commission. The move appears to have come after the Swiss company announced it would be reintroducing plastic straws in Switzerland, where the ban does not apply.
There is of course a rationale, the firm claims that because their pouches are now made of a fully ‘recyclable’ plastic – since March 2024 – if the straws were also made of recyclable plastic, both items could be recycled together.
They say this move is to help their customers, many of whom apparently found the switch to paper straws in 2021 not ‘ideal’ and having to separate the pouch and straw for recycling is ‘not always practical’.
There are so many aspects to unpick. Not only is the firm calling for the EU to backtrack on an historic initiative that has helped to reduce plastic consumption across Member States at a time when plastic is increasingly a dirty word, but the firm is saying that the reason is to help their poor customers, who struggle to separate their recycling. The sentiment is patronising at best. The campaign fails to make mention of the financials, which presumably would not hinder Capri-Sun’s profitability.
In the firm’s defence, over 11,000 people have in fact signed the petition with comments from loyal customers sharing a general dislike of the paper straw taste and claim it falls apart.
However, of the 6 billion pouches the firm sells each year in 100 countries (according to its LinkedIn) these represent a handful, and Capri-Sun’s leadership team need to be mindful of the varying international consumer pulse.
From a PR point of view, even if the campaign’s rationale were more convincing, the media headline was always going to centre around the fact that Capri-Sun are campaigning to bring back plastic. And plastic remains plastic. Whether it’s recycled or not, it is a product made with harmful fossil fuels that does not biodegrade. It’s not a good look.
The final straw, if you’ll pardon the pun, is that the move appears to jar with the ‘vision’ they share loudly on their website of being ‘the most sustainable and best-tasting kids’ drink in the world’. The website states:
‘We aim to create a better world, one sip at a time. For you and for everyone we share earth with!’ and, ’..we’re determined to make the world a more sustainable (and even more fun!) place…Because we know that even the smallest changes can have a big impact to make our planet shine brighter.’
A comparison that springs to mind is Lego, which last September back tracked on using recycled bottles to make the iconic bricks. Whilst the messaging wasn’t ideal, Lego pushed out the news with details of the extensive research that had been carried out and the large team of people working on finding alternatives. Their research showed that using plastic bottles would have resulted in a greater carbon footprint, but there was reassurance that work was continuing behind the scenes.
In fact, Lego recently announced that they would make bricks from more expensive recycled plastic by 2032. With Capri-Sun, the details are thinner on the ground and the move appears to be based far more on customer experience than planet, which is an increasingly risky move.
Is it a PR stunt?
If the aim was to drum up media attention, this could be one of those instances where ‘there IS such a thing as bad PR’ and I for one will not be reaching out to buy their pouches any time soon. It also undoes the PR brownie points the firm earned when announcing its newly recyclable pouches in March this year.
Will it have a negative impact on sales? That remains to be seen but, as a comms move, the pouch and straw both go firmly in the PR ‘fail’ bin.
