This year, Coca-Cola is switching its non-returnable PET bottles for three brands completely to recycled material (rPET).
Beverage bottles should become beverage bottles again - that is one of the aims of the Coca-Cola sustainability strategy. This is why the company is increasingly focussing on the use of recycled material (rPET) for its non-returnable PET deposit bottles and is taking a further step in Germany this year: the PET bottles of the ViO, Fuze Tea and Powerade brands will be completely converted to rPET. For all other brands, all bottles up to a size of 0.5 litres as well as the 1.5 litre and 2.0 litre bottles will be made entirely of rPET in future.
This means that Coca-Cola in Germany has achieved a Proportion of recycled material in PET single-use deposit bottles of around 70 per cent.
„Packaging accounts for around 27 per cent of our CO2 footprint in this country. It is therefore at the centre of our path to climate neutrality. By systematically converting our single-use deposit bottles to recycled PET, we are taking an important step towards a circular economy in which we minimise the use of primary raw materials and reuse used raw materials.“ Tilmann Rothhammer,Managing Director Customer Service and Supply Chain at Coca-Cola European Partners Germany
In Germany Coca-Cola saves around 32,000 tonnes of new PET material this year and around 57,000 tonnes of CO2 as a result. Rothhammer emphasises: „We had set ourselves the target for Germany of having a 50 per cent share of rPET in our single-use deposit bottles by 2023. We will now reach this target two years earlier than planned and we will also significantly exceed it at 70 per cent.“
100 per cent rPET associated with investments
The switch to rPET involves considerable investment and challenges. This year, for example, Coca-Cola is using more than 15 million euros for the procurement of the recycled material which is significantly more expensive than virgin material. In addition, high-quality, food-grade rPET is not yet available in sufficient quantities to convert all of the company's PET bottles.
Therefore Coca-Cola invests in innovative recycling technologies on the one hand, such as those from CuRe Technology, and in long-term supply agreements with recycling partners in order to promote capacity expansions and innovations. The company is also focussing on saving material where possible and switching to recycled material for outer packaging.
In the endeavour to make single-use PET returnable bottles even more sustainable, the Coca-Cola not lose sight of reusable packaging and is also continuously investing in this area: in the years 2018-2020, around 150 million euros were invested in new reusable production lines, reusable containers, the expansion of the reusable bottle pool and new reusable crates in Germany. Most recently, two new returnable deposit bottles were launched on the German market in 2019: the 1-litre glass bottles for Coca-Cola Classic, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar and ViO mineral water. These Investments to continue this year including a new 0.4 litre returnable glass bottle.
SourceCoca-Cola Germany
