EGYPT – Nestlé Pure Life, world’s largest bottled water brand has launched Egypt’s first water bottles made of 100% recycled plastics (rPET), spearheading its move towards more sustainable packaging.
The new bottles, coming in 1.5 litres format are made of high quality, food-grade recovered and reprocessed plastics.
The innovation was first introduced and approved by the European Union as safe to use, ensuring quality and safety.
The move is in line with Nestlé’s global commitment to increase the usage of rPET in packaging materials by 50% worldwide by 2025.
To achieve the target, the manufacturing giant is investing a total of US$2 billion to develop sustainable packaging solutions for food grade recycled plastic.
“Nestlé has been transforming its packaging globally as part of its commitment to protect the environment, which is why we launched the rPET water bottle for the 1.5 liters in a shrink format in Egypt.
“We hope this move will continue to encourage a circular packaging system, where all bottles are collected and recycled, bottle to bottle.
“We encourage our colleagues and industry players to embrace the same journey to help ensure bottled water products support a sustainable future,” said Business Executive Officer of Nestlé Waters Egypt, Rassem Dabbas.
Expanding the impact and contributing to increase recycling behaviour and raise public awareness, the new water bottles will include a QR code on the label.
The code when scanned will direct to Nestlé Pure Life’s website for further information about the product, as well as details of livelihood improvement and sustainability initiatives.
Furthermore, vending machines will be placed at high traffic venues where consumers will dispose their used plastic bottles which will be transferred for recycling.
The shift to rPET is another revolutionary step for Nestlé Waters Egypt, which in 2019 launched the “if it clicks, it’s safe” campaign becoming the first bottled water company to eliminate the bottle neck sleeves, removing approximately 240 metric tons of plastics.
It grew into a game-changing initiative that was later adopted by major water bottle companies in the local market.
As part of its global commitments that tackle environmental and social issues, Nestlé Egypt is committed to recover and recycle as much plastic as it produces which will amount to 17,000 tonnes of PET by the end of 2021 through “Dorna” initiative which support and encourage waste recycling operations and accelerate the pace of plastic collection.
The company launched the initiative in support of Egypt’s environment protection strategy, aimed to reduce plastic waste and adopt a reverse credit system to simultaneously create social, economic, and environmental impact.
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