EUROPE – The Coca-Cola Company and the Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) have announced that its Honest, GLACÉAU Smartwater and Chaudfontaine brands will be sold in bottles made from 100% recycled plastic (rPET) by the end of 2019 and 2020.
According to the company, the transition will replace 9,000 tonnes of virgin plastic per year across Western Europe, getting it closer to its sustainable goals.
This is in line with the ambitious goal to ensure half of the plastic used in its PET bottles across Western Europe are made from recyclable materials.
Just as outlined in the companies’ joint sustainability action plan This is Forward, the pledge includes making 100% of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025.
“This is a significant step for our business. From 2020, wherever you buy these brands in our Western European markets, you will find them in a bottle that is entirely made from recycled plastic,” said Bruno van Gompel, Technical and Supply Chain Director for Coca-Cola Western Europe.
“This is a clear signal of our ambition – we aim to meet and exceed our target of using 50% rPET across our total portfolio by 2025.”
“Both Honest and GLACÉAU Smartwater have a huge following in the US, whilst being relatively young brands in Europe.
“We have ambitious growth plans for both of these brands, as we continue to broaden our portfolio to offer people different drinks to meet changing tastes and lifestyles – and we want to grow them sustainably.”
CCEP has also announced that it is transitioning Sprite from a green PET bottle to a clear PET pack, which can more easily be recycled bottle to bottle.
The journey towards a circular economy began in 1990s when Coca-Cola first used recycled PET in its bottles.
The company has invested in enhanced recycling to improve the availability of food-grade recycled PET for use in its bottles, through a technology that allows PET to be created from low-value plastic waste that previously couldn’t be recycled into bottles.
“These new technologies expand the types of plastic waste streams that can be recycled back into bottles, allowing a broader range of collected materials to become part of the circular economy.
“It also enables us to use collection streams that were normally going to incineration or landfill. Investments in scale-up technologies such as these help us accelerate our use of recycled plastic in our bottles,” said Bruno.
As part of The Coca-Cola Company’s initiative, Coca-Cola Amatil in April said it targets to make 70% of its plastic bottles entirely from recycled plastic by the end of 2019.
The Coca-Cola Company has set a global goal of reducing plastic waste by 2030 through collecting and recycling as many cans and bottles as it sells each year.
