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Coca-Cola European Partners Debut Recycled Plastic Water Bottles
UXBRIDGE, England -- Coca-Cola European Partners announced that its Honest, Glacéau Smartwater and Chaudfontaine brands soon will be packaged in bottles made from 100% rPET recycled plastic. The new bottles will be phased in between the end of 2019 and 2020, with rPET replacing some 9,000 tonnes (about 9,921 tons) of virgin plastic annually across Western Europe. According to the company, this initiative directly supports CCEP and Atlanta, GA-based Coca-Cola Co.'s commitment that, by 2025, at least half...
July 22, 2019 by Tim Sanford
UXBRIDGE, England -- Coca-Cola European Partners announced that its Honest, Glacéau Smartwater and Chaudfontaine brands soon will be packaged in bottles made from 100% rPET recycled plastic. The new bottles will be phased in between the end of 2019 and 2020, with rPET replacing some 9,000 tonnes (about 9,921 tons) of virgin plastic annually across Western Europe.
According to the company, this initiative directly supports CCEP and Atlanta, GA-based Coca-Cola Co.'s commitment that, by 2025, at least half of the plastic used in its PET bottles across Western Europe will come from recycled sources. That pledge was outlined in the companies' joint "This is Forward" sustainability action plan.
Bruno van Gompel, technical and supply chain director for Coca-Cola Western Europe, said: "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. This is a clear signal of our ambition." The aim, he said, is to meet and exceed the earlier target of using 50% rPET across the total portfolio by 2025.
"Both Honest and Glacéau Smartwater have a huge following in the U.S.," he explained, although they are 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 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."
"We know people have high expectations of companies to make the products that they love in a sustainable way, and we're committed to meeting those expectations," observed Coca-Cola European Partners chief supply chain officer Ron Lewis. "Ultimately, our goal is to ensure that every bottle or can we sell is collected, recycled and reused. By moving Sprite from a green bottle to a clear bottle, the material can easily be recycled and used again to make another bottle."
Both CCEP and Coca-Cola Co. have a strong track record of investment in recycled PET, with Coca-Cola first using the material in its plastic bottles in the 1990s. More recently, CCEP has invested in enhanced recycling technologies to improve the availability of food-grade recycled PET for use in its bottles. This technology allows PET to be created from low-value plastic waste that previously couldn't be recycled into bottles.
Van Gompel explained that 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," he added. "Investments in scale-up technologies such as these help us accelerate our use of recycled plastic in our bottles."
CCEP was formed three years ago by combining the three main Coca-Cola Co. Western European bottling companies: Coca-Cola Enterprises, Coca-Cola Iberian Partners, S.A. and Coca-Cola Erfrischungsgetränke AG.
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