Coca-Cola European Partners gives us an overview of the company’s actions to reduce its packaging waste, its work to cut plastic, increase recycling and what it thinks of deposit return schemes.
Food and beverage packaging is an important part of our modern lives, yet the world has a packaging problem. Like many companies that make products we all love, our packaging has contributed to this global challenge.
We have a responsibility to help solve this problem. By investing in our planet and our packaging, we can help make the world’s packaging problem a thing of the past.
To do this, The Coca-Cola Company is leading the industry with a bold, ambitious global goal: to help collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one we sell by 2030. This is part of our larger strategy to grow with conscience by becoming a total beverage company that grows the right way.
It’s the right thing to do for our planet, our communities, and our business.
For many years we have all been well served by our local authority kerbside collection services but despite their best efforts it is very difficult to see how that service can achieve the quality and quantity of collection required by today’s growing societal demands.
Closer to home, in Great Britain we are taking action on packaging sustainability by using our business and our brands to build a better future. We’ll aim to collect all of our packaging so that more can be recycled and none of it ends up as litter or in the oceans.
We have already reduced our packaging footprint by avoiding secondary packaging where we can and light weighting primary packaging whenever that is sensible and possible. Almost all of our packaging is now recyclable or reusable and we want to ensure that we design to achieve 100% on that score as soon as possible.
To help create a viable market for reprocessors we will make sure that in Great Britain at least 50% of the material we use for our PET bottles comes from recycled plastic by 2020. A circular market providing high grade bales of PET which are used repeatedly for food quality packaging, making new bottles from old bottles, is essential if we are to achieve that goal.
For many years we have all been well served by our local authority kerbside collection services but despite their best efforts it is very difficult to see how that service can achieve the quality and quantity of collection required by today’s growing societal demands. That is why we support the introduction of a well-designed deposit return system in GB.
A well-designed DRS is one which shoppers and consumers understand and support. A scheme that works well within our retail environment and which achieves its environmental goals within a lowest sustainable long-term cost structure. That scheme must be managed by business with appropriate government oversight.
To build on those essentials we will continue to use the reach of our brands to inspire everyone in GB, to recycle and we will lead the way in pioneering sustainable packaging – including renewable materials and smart ways to reduce packaging waste.
Coca-Cola European Partners have joined Valpak to become headline sponsors at this year’s Scottish Resources Conference, which takes place on 3-4 October at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
